


An Open Book

by Jaded



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bookstore, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cassian x chilaquiles, F/M, Fluff, Kid Fic, Leftists in love, Novelist Cassian, Professor Cassian, Single Mom Jyn, Writer's Block, minor luke skywalker/mara jade, the leather jacket of moral ambiguity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-10-15 03:40:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10549448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaded/pseuds/Jaded
Summary: Professor and novelist Cassian Andor is in London doing a visiting professorship at Yavin University. During his first weeks there, he meets single mom and bookseller Jyn Erso, and he finds that he can't stop thinking about her.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> What's happened to me? Why am I writing a fluffy modern AU? This ate away at my brain until I at least finished this first part. Hope you all like this! Any feedback is greatly appreciated!

 

* * *

 

“We lose ourselves in books; we find ourselves there, too.”

 

* * *

 

Cassian’s checked the Waterstones, the WH Smith, even the Tesco, but he’s had no luck finding a copy of _Love in the Time of Cholera_ , and the bookstands in the Tube station only yielded Harry Potter books, romances, or the novelization of the latest Star Wars movie.

 

“This is ridiculous,” he mutters, wracking his brain to try and remember the name and location of the little bookstore he saw the week before, hoping that it will deliver on what he needs. All he remembers is that he saw it on his walk from his flat to the university, but that’s a one-mile stretch and he doesn’t currently have the time to wander aimlessly in hopes of finding it.

 

He’s only been in London two weeks now, fourteen days into a 365 day visiting professorship at Yavin University in Kensington, and he’s still getting his bearings while finally adjusting to all things _British_. It’s the first full day of class, and though it’s not like he’s going to be doing a full reading of the book for his students, it seems poor form for the professor to show up unprepared, especially a visiting professor who was hired to be a _name_ for the fledgling university.

 

He shivers. It’s early autumn but the day is already wet and cool. He pulls his blazer tighter around himself and makes the turn off Cromwell onto Earl’s Court Road, the autumn wind nipping at his face.

 

About two blocks from his place, he catches it--almost missing it as he walks past an alley street. But there it is, out of the corner of his eye, a swinging board shaped like a jewel, and the shop name emblazoned in purple: Kyber Books.

 

He hopes it has what he needs.

 

A bell rings as he pushes open the door, and he sees that there’s a solitary woman in the shop at the counter, brown hair pulled back into a bun, green eyes heavy with sleep. She looks at once young and old, and it makes him start. The way she’s hovering over the till, he assumes that she works here, and he barrels forward with his question. He has to teach in 30 minutes, and it’s at least a 15 minute walk from here to campus--if he rushes--then back to his classroom for his next period.

 

“Excuse me, but,” he says, and she looks up at him expectantly. “I’m looking for a copy of a Garcia Márquez book, it’s--”

 

“-- _Love in the Time of Cholera_?” she answers, looking up, her sleepy eyes now large and alert.

 

“Yes,” he stammers, and it makes him do a double take, but what was he expecting? Perhaps he was too used to chain stores where the employees were university students who just wanted to make wages and didn’t care to know about the books they were selling beyond their location in the store. He wondered if this was actually _her_ shop.

 

Like a magician, she pulls out a copy of the novel from under the counter and waves it carelessly in the air. “I had one saved for a student, but he never showed. You can have it instead.”

 

A smile tugs at his face, more pleasant than cursory, and something tingles in his brain. “Thanks.”

 

She begins to ring him up, and chats a little aimlessly. “This must be all for the same class. You’re the third person in here this week.”

 

Cassian pulls out his wallet to pay. “I’m glad you had it. I have a class in 30 minutes, and no one shop seemed to carry it.”

 

“Well,” she says wryly, putting the book and receipt in the bag, “I look forward to putting them out of business.” She laughs to herself. “You’re a little older than the other students, if you don't mind me saying. But I think that’s great. If you want to get your education, why not go back to uni a bit later? I think it’s fab. Just don’t let those children push you around.”

 

Before Cassian can correct her, there’s a tinny burble that comes from behind her, and both their attentions are drawn away. The woman turns behind her and pulls out a video baby monitor. In black and white, Cassian can see a little boy pulling himself up inside his crib.

 

“My coworker,” she says with a tired smile. She tips her chin up and then turns back to look at the monitor, and her face is full of a quiet fondness. He notices then the green of her eyes then and finds himself staring a beat longer than he should.  “Terrible at his job,” she adds. “He’s naps all the time when should be working, but at least he only wants to get paid in milk and cereal puffs.”

 

“He’s cute,” Cassian says, tilting his head to see the toddler turn directly into the camera and wave. He rubs at the scruff on his face, a nervous tic.

 

“The cute ones,” she says, laughing a little to herself, a soft sound airy as bubbles, “they always get away with everything, don’t they?”

 

“They do,” he says, and they smile at one another.

 

She hands him the bag with the book, and he says his thanks.

 

“No problem.” She taps the face of her wristwatch. “You better scoot before you’re late.”

 

He checks his own watch and curses, and breaks for the door, package in hand.

 

“You know,” she says as he makes to leave, “you could have just bought the ebook if you were in such a hurry!”

 

He shouldn’t keep talking, but he _wants_ to for reasons he can’t yet understand, and he stops a moment, hand on the door. “Are you trying to put yourself out of business?” he asks her.

 

She shrugs and glances at the baby monitor again. “Maybe.”

 

There’s no more time for any sort of goodbye, and so he rushes out into the street and up the road.

 

Being fashionably late only is fashionable if you’re not in a full body sweat, he thinks, but halfway there he breaks into a run anyway. This gives him three minutes to spare when he finally gets to his classroom, just enough time for a gulp of water and a moment to dab the perspiration running down his neck.

 

The class goes fine in the end, and his writing workshop students at least seem interested. Everything is busy and new enough that he doesn’t think of the woman at the shop at all, at least, not until he’s back at his flat that evening, thumbing through his copy of the book and wondering whether or not he should have asked her for her name.

 

 

+

 

 

Later that week, one of Cassian’s workshop students finds him after class, hovering in the doorway of his office, notebook pressed to her chest. _Lara_ , he recalls, _from Manchester_ , and not _Laura from Brighton_. His memory is usually sharp and deep, but he’s felt a little distracted lately, even though the jet lag has finally worn off.

 

“Did you have a question?” he asks, shuffling the extra syllabi into his leather portfolio, getting ready to head home for the day.

 

She steps in but stays standing. “I was wondering, Professor Andor,” she says, “if you were doing any readings while you were here in London.”

 

“Readings?”

 

“Your last book was _brilliant_ ,” she says in a gush, and he feels himself redden a bit. “ _La Frontera_ is why I wanted to study writing here. With you. I know I would love to hear you read from it, as would some of the other students.” The look she gives him next is unmistakable in its meaning, in the sly, predatory way it slides onto her face, and he feels his defenses snap up because Cassian thinks he knows what’s going on; he’s seen it before from some of his other writer friends back stateside. Admiring fans turned students turned groupies turned sexual conquests. Perhaps he’s wrong about Lara--and he hope he is--but he doesn’t tangle the personal and professional by rule, especially when the power dynamics are so easily exploited.

 

He steers the conversation back, shouldering his blazer back on as he does. “I had not thought about doing a reading. I would think that the department would spearhead that, no?”

 

“The student ones, yes,” Lara says, “but the professors usually set up their own. I know that I would love to see you read.”

 

“Well,” he says finally, heading to the door, trying to sidestep his student and turn off the light, “I’ll take that into consideration.” She’s not budging from her spot, so he finally motions to the door and she takes the hint. “Goodnight,” he says, stepping around her, but she follows.

 

“Which way are you heading?” she blurts, and he has to check his patience. She’s all of what, nineteen? He’s twenty-six; not that much older, but the gulf of life experience is vast.

 

“I have some errands to run,” he offers as a way to let her bow out of this gracefully, but Lara is young, persistent.

 

“Which way? I’m going toward Gloucester Road . . . “

 

“Ah,” he says, pointing to his chest. “Other direction. Have a good evening, Laura,” he says, getting her name wrong on purpose, and he tries not to feel too sorry about the crestfallen expression that it leaves on her face.

 

 

+

 

 

He doesn’t actually need to run errands, but all the same, he makes his way toward the Sainsbury’s to keep up the pretense anyway. And hunger is starting to gnaw at his belly, and a bag of crisps sounds good.

 

But he gets distracted in the produce aisle when he sees a mountain of fresh poblanos. He’s missed the Mexican and Sonoran food from home in Tucson where he had been teaching the past three years. He misses the little restaurants and the fresh, homemade tamales from the abuela who sold them out of a shopping cart outside of his favorite bookstore. He picks up a pepper and wonders if he could somehow manage to make chiles rellenos without setting his flat on fire, and puts in down in favor of something more simple and practical--maybe some chilaquiles.

 

He really should be back at his flat and writing. Part of the reason for him being in London was to get new inspiration to work on his new novel. But he's blocked. He's been blocked for what seems like forever. But his mind wanders again, and he thinks, _first, chilaquiles._

 

On his way to the dairy section, a familiar voice catches his attention and makes him turn away from thoughts of Monterrey jack and tortillas.

 

“Darling! Liam! You put that back right now! Stop! Come back to mummy!”

 

Cassian spins and there she is, the woman from the bookshop. She’s at a half run down the aisle in pursuit of a small boy. Cassian’s not great at guessing ages of children, but the boy is small, and is running and talking, so not a baby, but not quite more than that yet.

 

The child halts abruptly in front of him and looks up to stare. “Hello!” he says at last, waving. Cassian waves back.

 

The woman huffs as she scoops the child--Liam--up in her arms. “I’m sorry,” she starts, then looks at him, recognition dawning on her face. “Oh, hello.”

 

“Hello,” he says. He wants to ask her for her name, and the feeling dings around his chest like pinball, but he has no _reason to do it_.

 

“ _Love in the Time of Cholera_ ,” she says, blowing the fringe out of her eyes.

 

“The same,” he says.

 

The boy strains to break free of her grasp, and she lunges forward to catch him. It causes her to stumble, but Cassian is there to catch the boy. His mostly empty shopping basket hits the ground with a crack, and an onion rolls away and disappears down the aisle.

 

“There you go,” he says, handing the boy back to her. “I’m Cassian,” he offers, putting out his hand but then realizing that her arms are too full. He pulls it back.

 

“Jyn,” she says, nodding. “And this is Liam, as you might have heard me screaming across the shop,” she adds ruefully.

 

“You’ve certainly got a handful there.”

 

“Don’t I know it,” she says, kissing the boy on the temple, and for some reason, Cassian feels his chest tighten.

 

In the distance, he can see that she’s also dropped her groceries on the ground in her rush to grab her son. “Can you use some help?” he asks.

 

She turns and looks, and her face flushes with embarrassment.

 

“It happens to everyone,” he says, gesturing to his lost onion and working his way back to help her with her things.

 

“Thank you,” she says, watching him. “You didn’t have to.”

 

“It’s no problem.” He gathers up a head of broccoli and two frozen dinners from the linoleum. “They say it takes a village to raise a child,” he says. “So I imagine it would be helpful to have at least two adults for a grocery shopping trip.”

 

She gives him an odd look then, her lips parting slightly so that he can see the moment they come apart. She’s appraising him, he realizes. She can see right through him even when even he can’t see how transparent he’s being at this moment until her eyes squint ever so slightly and her cheeks round into a smile. It makes him wilt a bit, but it also makes him feel something else, something round and full and dare he say it, hopeful?

 

“It would help to have two,” she says carefully, “but it’s just me and him; the two of us against the world.”

 

“Oh.” He hands her the refilled basket, not sure what else to do.

 

“Well,” she says at last. “Thank you for your help. It was nice seeing you again, Cassian. See you around?” she asks, and it’s a specific question, he thinks, not just a way to say goodbye.

 

“See you around,” he says, nodding, hoping that what he says is true.

 

 

+

 

 

The onion is left somewhere among the aisles at Sainsburys, and Cassian doesn’t bring home any groceries. Instead, he brings home an idea.

 

He’s going to set up a book reading. And he knows exactly where he’d like to hold it.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A game in the park, a pint at the pub, and an evening walk home in the starlight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well dammit, there be a little angst ahead.

It’s a warm day in September, and Cassian feels calm and happy. Maybe it’s because he is playing _f_ _ú_ _tbol_ and his teammates actually call it _football_ and not _soccer._ But maybe it’s because he’s in the middle of a Hyde Park football pitch and the sun is out and shining and he’s finally gotten into the rhythm of life in England.

 

There’s a shout from across the field, and Cassian sees Davits Draven loft the ball into the air, sending it directly toward him. As the head of the Literature and Creative Writing Departments at Yavin, Draven’s technically Cassian’s boss, but right now he’s the midfielder to Cassian’s striker, and on the pitch it is Draven who serves him and not the other way around.

 

Watching the ball float down, Cassian prepares himself to whip his head against it and send it sailing into the net, but it’s too low, and what should be a header drifts toward his chest instead. Trapping the ball with his chest, he lets it drop to his feet. He pushes forward with one, two steps, plants his foot, and strikes it hard with all of his momentum behind him. He watches as it sails right past the spindly arms of Kay Tuesso, professor of physics and an outlier on a team full of professors loaded with degrees in the humanities, and he pumps his fist in delight.

 

Draven runs up to Cassian, clapping in celebration. “Good man, Andor! Top notch!” Draven always sounds a little bit like a character out of _Wooster and Jeeves_ when he’s in good spirits, a bit too _pip-pip cheerio_ , but Cassian’s gotten used to it over the last few weeks and accepts it for what it is.

 

Kay rolls the ball back out onto the grass, the disdain plain on his face.

 

”Congratulations,” he says dryly. “You’ve scored a goal during a practice scrimmage. You must be so pleased.”

 

“Don’t be mad, Kay,” Cassian says, jogging up and patting his new friend’s arm. “You're still the best recreational keeper this side of London! We would not have pinched you from Imperial College if you weren’t.”

 

“I’m a traitor, that’s what I am,” Kay sniffs. “Serves me right. Perhaps I should have stayed on their team.”

 

“Nah,” Cassian says. “Come on, let’s get the others up here, too to join us.”

 

The rest of the team is made up of other professors at Yavin: Leia Organa, political science; Luke Skywalker, nonfiction and composition; Chirrut Imwe, philosophy; Baze Malbus, poetry; R. Scott Melshi, a fellow fiction writer like Cassian; and Monica Mothma, sociology. They stretch on the grass and lazily pass balls between them; Skywalker practices a fancy flip of an in-bounds throw.

 

Cassian watches them quietly while Draven and Kay begin to argue. They’ve become a quick little community of friends, and for Cassian, who hasn’t had family in forever and who has been something of a loner for most of his life, there’s something magical about it.

 

“We have a big game against Imperial College coming up, team, so we need to be sharp!” Draven barks.

 

“Davitz,” Monica says, lacing up her cleats and giving him one of her patented patient looks, “this is recreational football. Calm down.”

 

“Those Imperials have had the best of us for too long, Mon!” Draven grits. “I won’t let Tarkin and Krennic make fools of us again this year on the pitch! Not after last year!”

 

“Have you heard about their new keeper? Annika . . . Anakin something?” Melshi stage whispers, striding up next to Cassian. “Some Swede, I think. He’s in their robotics program. He’s apparently terrifying.”

 

“I hate them, but I like their team name,” Luke says, arching his hand in front of him. “The Empire! It’s catchy.”

 

Like Cassian, Luke’s an American, though he’s more Big Sur than _Sur de Mexico._ Luke’s also more of the expected stripe of American for people who didn’t know or didn’t care to—blonde hair and blue eyes to Cassian’s brown skin and brown eyes and brown hair—and the Skywalkers had been in the United States a few more generations than Cassian’s. His family had only crossed from the Nogales of Mexico to the Nogales of Arizona during his lifetime.

 

“Our team name is not so bad,” Cassian muses. “’The Rebel Alliance.’ It’s a good counterpoint if Imperial is our rival.”

 

“And indeed they are,” Melshi growls, smashing the ball between his hands.

 

Practice lasts for another thirty minutes before there’s talk of going to the pub, but Draven’s adamant they run a few more drills.

 

“Let’s just do a scrimmage then,” Leia says after finishing yet another grapevine drill, the irritation dripping from her voice. “This is dull and unproductive.” And because Leia is Leia and carries herself more like a Prime Minister than an MP’s daughter (even stateside, Cassian’s heard of Bail Organa), she gets her way.

 

“We need another keeper besides Kay then,” Draven says, relenting.

 

Baze Malbus, who Cassian thinks must be the most intimidating poet the world has ever seen, booms, “But we only have nine here. Uneven sides.”

 

And then Cassian hears _that_ voice again as he’s drying the sweat off of his forehead with the hem of his t-shirt. It’s the wry tenor that’s drifted in and out of his dreams since he first met her less than a week ago.

 

 _Jyn_.

 

“Need a tenth?”

 

She’s carrying Liam in her arms, and she is also with a man around Cassian’s age, which makes him deflate a little bit. _Foolish,_ he thinks to himself, shaking his head and chiding himself for getting swept up in the idea of a woman he barely knows. But Jyn is looking at him as she speaks. He feels a wave of self-consciousness and remembers that he’s still gripping the bottom of his shirt, flashing her the bare strip of skin that spans his belly. He lowers his shirt and looks down at the grass.

 

“Erso,” Draven says by way of greeting, and the unmasked contempt and familiarity makes Cassian wonder if that’s why Draven hadn’t responded to his repeated requests to discuss the reading at Kyber Books. But Cassian also thinks, _Jyn Erso_ , so _that’s your name,_ and files it away in his memory.

 

“Professor Draven,” she says curtly, jutting out her chin.

 

“Let her play,” Chirrut says, standing up, grinning. “Let her play! Time is being wasted and I want to get to my pint!” Baze laughs at this and pulls Chirrut up to his feet.

 

They split into teams and Jyn and Cassian are on the same. She’s barefoot when they line up, and he stares at the chipped coral polish on her toenails. She notices, of course, and shrugs and says, “I didn’t bring my boots. I wasn’t expecting to play today.”

 

“Won’t it hurt?” he asks.

 

“I kick harder barefoot,” she says boldly, bending at the waist to stretch her hamstrings. When he shoots her a skeptical look, she says pointedly, “Don’t worry about me. I won’t break.”

 

Heat flares in his belly, and he turns his head away in embarrassment. She laughs, and the sound is bright and round as a bell.

 

The scrimmage lasts 20 minutes. Baze offers to be the other keeper for Cassian’s team, and off assists from Cassian, Jyn scores twice on a further irritated Kay and his side wins in a route.

 

“We make a good team,” he says to her afterward, handing her a bottle of water that she accepts gratefully. The water trickles down her chin, and he resists to urge to reach over and wipe it away.

 

“We do,” she says, then looks a little past him at Liam who is napping in grass next to the man Jyn had arrived with earlier. Cassian turns with her and sees that the little boy’s arms are thrown over his eyes, his arms still chubby with baby fat. There’s green grass tangled in his mess of brown hair. It’s the most peaceful sight he’s seen in years.

 

“We’re planning on grabbing some drinks after this, if you and, uh, _your friend_ are interested,” he says, nodding his head toward the sidelines. “And your son. Liam is, of course, welcome.” And then Cassian remembers that they are going to a pub and thinks about all the terrible jokes about babies in bars.

 

But Jyn says yes, and the friend--Bodhi, she will later tell him--wakes up the little boy and carries him out of the park.

 

Melshi packs up all the equipment and let’s them know he’ll meet them there, and the rest of them walk. While the Yavin student union--and the pub therein--is closer to where they are now, they’re all professors and opt to not mingle with students in their personal time if it can be helped. Instead, they head toward Kensington High Street, still in their kits, and look for The Blue Bantha, the preferred faculty watering hole.

 

Liam is only half awake for most of the walk, but when they hit the high street, his batteries seem to kick in and he breaks free from Bodhi near an intersection, slipping out of a grasping hand. Seeing it happen, horror in his eyes, Cassian leaps forward without a second thought and grabs the boy by the shoulder and spins him up and around and then down to the sidewalk as a black cab takes a sharp corner.

 

He pulls the startled little boy toward him with both hands and crouches to meet him eye level. “You have to watch for cars, young man,” Cassian firmly. “You must be safe. Not just for yourself but for your mother.” Liam’s brow furrows deep into an angry toddler pout, but he doesn’t argue back, doesn’t spit out a no. “Hey,” Cassian says more gently, patting his hand, “it’s okay. I know you want to run, but the city is a busy place.”

 

Jyn runs over and grabs her son, lifting him into her arms, shaking as she embraces him. When she pulls away, it is to stare deeply into her child’s face. “You do not do that again! Do you hear me, darling?” She pulls him close to her chest, a deep sigh making both mother and child rise and fall. “You’re all I got, darling. You’re all I got.” Liam begins to cry, and she coos at him to soothe the tears. When she looks up, it’s to Cassian, and her face is apologetic. “He’s in this running phase now,” she tries to explain. “I’m trying to teach him to look right, left, right, but he keeps sprinting like a reckless little daredevil.”

 

“You don’t have to explain to me,” Cassian starts, but Bodhi comes up next to them, looking nervous, and says with a stutter, “Like mother like son, right, Jyn? Always on the run.” Jyn shoots him a withering look, and he inclines his head in apology.

 

The moment feels private, and he doesn’t know what Bodhi is to Jyn or what she is to him, and so Cassian steps away, afraid to intrude.

 

He mutters a pardon and jobs to catch up to Kay and the others as they round the corner to head to the mostly empty pub during the late-afternoon lull.

 

At the counter, he and Kay order a pint each--a pilsner for himself and a hard cider for Kay.

 

“Pear cider?” he asks his friend, and Kay shrugs.

 

“This cider has the highest alcohol content of the options on tap for its price. I like to be effective and economical as possible when getting drunk. We all can’t best-selling novelists, you know.” They both pause to take a sip, Kay downing a third of his glass in one go. “By the way,” he says offhandedly to Cassian, “You know who she is, don’t you? Rather, do you know who her father is?”

 

“Her father?” Cassian asks, puzzled. “Why would I know anything about her father? I just met her a week ago.” He turns to look at her then, belatedly realizing that Kay never said Jyn’s name. He wonders how obvious he was being, but the answer was clearly _too_ obvious. It surprises him how uncharacteristically easy to read he had been of late, especially if even Kay, who, though brilliant, was something of an idiot at reading social cues, had caught on to his interest in Jyn.

 

“Have you heard of Galen Erso?” Cassian’s blank stare draws a sigh from Kay. “Brilliant engineer. Working on the EADU project in Geneva? Ring a bell?”

 

Cassian shakes his head. “Why would I know about such things? I’m not in physics.”

 

“Please, his work on weapons systems? You don’t know about this? It’s of international importance, Cassian.”

 

“I’m not some sort of intelligence agent, Kay. I write novels. Why would weapons systems be something obvious to me?”

 

Kay sighs heavily again and drains his cider. “Really, Cassian. Galen Erso on the short-list for a Nobel prize in physics. His recent work has made real strides in our understanding of star formation.”

 

“Okay, and so?”

 

“He was a big name at Imperial College before he left and joined the EADU project. And that girl there--” Kay points a long finger at Jyn, which Cassian pulls back immediately because _she will see_ , “is his only child.”

 

Draven sidles up to them at the bar, and he lifts an eyebrow at Cassian. “I was curious why you were so adamant about holding a reading at that _communist_ bookstore of hers instead of at the university or at the WH Smith,” he says dryly. Then, “A lager, my good man,” he says, finger up to the barkeep before turning back to Cassian. “But now I see why. You know she has associations with Saw Gerrera, too, don’t you, Andor?”

 

“The anti-fascist guerilla leader?" He is further intrigued. "Really?”

 

But before Draven can elaborate, a voice says, “It’s not a communist bookstore, _Professor_.” Jyn pops up behind Kay’s shoulder, startling them all.  “It’s socialist.”

 

Wedging herself between Cassian and the barstool next to him, she orders a Guinness. She then brushes up against him as she reaches for a five pound note, and he blinks rapidly and freezes in his spot. He wonders how much she heard; he wonders if it’s good or bad for him if the answer is _everything_.

 

“I thought you were a socialist, too, sir,” Cassian says to Draven, trying to draw away some of the tension. “You’re pretty well known for your leftist sensibilities. Wouldn’t this be right up your alley?”

 

“That’s besides the point.” Draven splutters. “There is protocol about how things are done!”

 

“And that protocol is ‘what I say goes,’ isn’t it?” Jyn says, the naked challenge in her voice.

 

“There were reasons you burned out of uni, Erso. I see nothing has changed.”

 

“Not blindly following your directives isn’t exactly burning out.”

 

The barkeep slides a Guinness in front of Cassian and he quickly says, “Your drink, Jyn! Do you want to grab a table?”

 

She sneers a bit more at Draven but nods at Cassian when he places his hand on her arm. “Alright.”

 

At the table they sit together in silence for a long moment. There’s still tension in her jaw and fire in her eyes. Cassian’s not sure what to say, just yet, so instead he runs his hands over the weathered wood of the table, fingers rubbing at the scratched-in graffiti of drunken devotion: hearts and initials wet with beer and faded with time. Jyn is seething. He hasn’t seen this side of her before, not in their short acquaintance, but from what he knows of her from just today, he isn’t surprised nor is he upset.

 

“You and Draven have a history it would seem,” he starts.

 

“I was a student in the writing program a few years ago. _Was_ being the operative word.” She sighs and takes a long drink, her eyes flickering over to her son who Bodhi is entertaining on the far end of the room with a chess board consisting of monsters for game pieces. Liam shrieks in delight, and Bodhi goes tearing after him, laughing.

 

Cassian smiles at the little boy. “Let me guess, it was three years ago?”

 

“You’re good at this,” she says, running a finger inside her glass and pulling the foam to the rim, a faraway look in her eyes.

 

“Part of my job is to be observant,” he says. “You were a writer?”

 

“ _Were_ , yes. Then things happened.” She smiled wistfully, eyes cast down to the table top. “And you’re definitely not a student, are you?” she says.

 

“Sorry, no. I’m a professor. Visiting.”

 

“Ah,” she says; then, “So did they give you my whole dossier? Draven and your tall friend?”

 

She’s sharp, sharp as he expected and more.

 

“Some,” he admits. “They mentioned you knew Saw Gerrera. And Kay is familiar with your father’s work.”

 

There’s a wry smile that plays on her face, and she lifts her glass and raises to him. “Well, here’s to absent fathers,” she says.

 

He feels like he’s steered this conversation exactly wrong, and he wants to steer it back--something lighter, something that doesn’t make her sadness rise like seafoam. But Draven interrupts, there at exactly the wrong time. He taps the table with his finger.

 

“Andor, a word.”

 

He wants to say no, but Draven is still his superior, even if they are off hours.

 

“I’ll be right back,” he tells Jyn. She nods.

 

The news isn’t important, not important enough to interrupt his conversation with Jyn or to talk about it on the weekend, but Draven pretends that it is. The big to-do is that the Scottish poet, Mara Jade, is scheduled to visit Yavin the following week, and Draven orders this: “I am tasking you showing her around the campus. She’ll be here for five days. You’re to let her sit in on your class, you’ll show her the new department building, take her out to dinner. The department will reimburse you.”

 

“Why me? Cassian asks. “I mean, I just got here. I don’t know London or the campus well enough yet to be anyone’s guide.”

 

“Everyone else is busy.” Cassian gives him a sidelong look; he knows this is not the case. Draven sighs, seemingly drawing his irritation from a deep and infinite well within himself. “Everyone who is not Skywalker, is busy,” he starts. Draven sighs again. “I honestly do not know what is going on there, but she refuses to see him or refer to him by name; the woman inexplicably just calls him ‘farmboy'! And she was explicit that it was anyone but him, or she wasn’t coming." Draven looks behind his shoulder then and adds, "And Malbus _is_ available but you know him well enough to know how he’ll take that request.”

 

“He won’t,” Cassian says.

 

“He won’t.”

 

“What about my reading then?”

 

“What about it?” Draven asks, but Cassian doesn’t back down. “Fine,” Draven says, throwing up his hands. “Have your little reading at your little bookstore. What does it matter to me?”

 

“Good,” Cassian says, ”good.”

 

“Talk to the secretary about it on Monday,” Draven says, taking his leave.

 

When he returns to Jyn at the table, pleased. She’s just returned from the toilets herself with Liam. Over her shoulder is a diaper bag, which she throws onto the bench and sighs. “Sometimes I think that the day am done with nappies will be the same day I shuffle from this mortal coil.”

 

“That bad?” he asks.

 

“Let me take a wild guess: this is not something that is part of your everyday routine.”

 

He laughs and says no, and this draws a smile from her. “You would be right.”

 

There’s a few moments to talk at last, minutes unspooling in quiet conversation. Their pint glasses move closer and closer together on the table until they are almost dead center, glass kissing glass. Their hands wader along with their drinks, too, but there’s an ounce more caution, though less and less with each passing sip of beer.They talk a little more, then a little more; small, safe things at first: how long she’s lived in London, why the store is called Kyber books (“My mother was a geologist before she was bookseller,” Jyn says, pulling out a pendant from around her neck. She puts the stone in his hand, and it’s still warm from being nestled against her skin. “She brought this stone back from the Khyber Pass when she was in Pakistan on a dig. She thought it would be a good name for a shop, but then the sign maker misspelled our order. We kept it, though.”)

 

A second pint makes them more boisterous, and Jyn rails at the rise of the nationalist party in Britain and he at the nationalist in America. Cassian wonders if to anyone else it looks like an odd kind of foreplay, the way it makes them both lean in and snarl out their deepest ideology, the way they smile when they find that they both agree with each other and at the same fevered pitch.

 

During this time, Liam comes screaming by a few times to his mother. Once it is to cry about a boo-boo, which Jyn kisses while holding his tousled head of hair in her hands, and another time it is to ask for a snack, and she gives him a handful of bar pretzels. Bodhi scoops him up each time, and they run off, Liam screaming in giggles as Bodhi chases him.

 

“He’s good with Liam,” Cassian says of this other man, who he hasn’t as anything but kind.

 

“He is.” Jyn bites her thumb, deep in thought, and he’s momentarily distracted by her mouth.

 

“And so . . . .” Cassian pauses and wonders before he asks the question that has been on his lips all night, “is it the three of you now?”

 

“What? Who? Bodhi?” She looks at him, confused. Then her eyes light up, a smile line crinkling on the left side of her face. “Oh, no. Bodhi’s like a brother to me! And a part-timer.” She explains further at what must be his blank stare. “He works at the shop, but we’ve know one another for ages. He’s ‘Uncle Bodhi’ to Liam in all but blood.”

 

“Is that right?” he says. He’d suspected perhaps they were just friends--had hoped--but the confirmation makes his cheeks feel warm.

 

It’s then that Liam comes screaming by for the third time, but there’s less charm here. He writhes in Bodhi’s arms, screaming, “Mummy!”

 

“I think we just, uh, hit the wall,” Bodhi says, throwing Liam over his shoulder. The little boy kicks and screams, and Bodhi gets a tiny sneaker in the ear, which makes him yelp. He releases Liam to the ground.

 

“I’m sorry,” Jyn says to Cassian. “it’s meltdown time, and my little _darling_ ," she says through gritted teeth, "needs to get to bed and we, home.”

 

Liam grabs her shirt and pulls until Jyn almost tips back. “Pick up, mummy,” he says, “pick up!”

 

Jyn crouches and swoops him up in her arms, and Liam seems to settle. “It was nice, today,” she says, standing back up. “Thank you, Cassian, for the nice time.”

 

Her face is dark in the pub light, but the dim candles highlight her features: her large, green eyes, her pale skin. And it doesn’t soften her; rather, the shadows make her look prouder and fiercer, and Cassian thinks that she looks like the kind of woman he wants to know and understand, even if it takes his whole life.

 

“I’m heading the same way,” he blurts, “if you want the company.” She doesn’t say no; she doesn’t say yes, and so he says, “I’ll say my goodbyes to my colleagues if you just give me a minute.”

 

And the goodbyes are easy, except for Kay who looks exasperated and Chirrut who gives him a knowing leer.

 

It takes about twenty minutes to walk back to their part of the neighborhood from the pub, and halfway there, Cassian and Jyn wave goodbye to Bodhi, who slips down the dimly lit alley and into the dark. With only the three of them left, they continue on in an easy silence to Jyn’s shop; Jyn’s home, which lay above the bookstore. Liam’s fallen asleep, buried in his mother’s shoulders, and he weighs heavily in her arms by the way she sags and slows the further they walk. As strong as she’s shown herself to be, Cassian thinks, she’s tired, and a thirty-pound child for a half mile is a labor, even if he is a labor of love.

 

“Would you like some help?” he asks her, nodding at Liam.

 

“You don’t mind?” she says.

 

“I don’t mind.”

 

Jyn gently lays Liam in Cassian’s arms, and the boy stays sound asleep.

 

“I wish I could sleep this well,” Cassian chuckles, and Jyn cards her fingers through her son’s hair and murmurs in agreement. They take a back way beyond the main road, and there’s a gated garden crawling thick with ivy to their right as they stroll. The streetlights glow orange, and the evening is calm. There’s a silence between them, but it’s strangely comfortable, and the only sounds that punctuates it Liam’s gentle snores.

 

“It must be nice to have Bodhi so near,” he says.

 

“It is,” Jyn agrees. “We don’t have much family around here, so it’s . . . nice. Nice to have him around.”

 

Cassian knows what it’s like to not have family, but he doesn’t say that to her, not yet. But he wants to, wants to let her know all the stories about himself that he’s never written and never told anyone else. He’s had to admit that since he met her two weeks ago, she’s dominated his thinking. But why? That is the question he has asked himself many times, and all the times, when lost in thought, he would recall her face. It’s not pity for her, nor is it any kind of pragmatism. That much is certain. But what else? All he knows is that in her he sees something brighter than he’s ever seen in another person, a need in her eyes that he wanted to understand, and it makes him ache in a way that feels more real and alive than anything he has felt for years.

 

The sign for Kyber books comes into view and Jyn says, “Well, here’s our stop.” But she doesn’t make for her keys quite yet, and she looks at him, a bit of wonder in her face. Cassian wants to kiss her, and the sensation claws at him, but he tells himself that doesn’t know her; not yet. And she doesn’t know him. There hasn’t been the time. It’s not something he’s allowed.

 

Her face shifts slightly, her eyes narrowing in the way her son’s had back on the high street. “You didn’t tell me,” she says. Her tone is a little harder, a little hurt.

 

Liam sighs and shifts in his arms. Cassian pulls him back up, and the little boy curls his chubby little arms his neck a little tighter. He smells faintly of soap and grass and the powdery softness of children.

 

“Tell you what?” Cassian asks. There’s a faint sensation building at the bottom of his spine, and the way she’s looking at him, he worries.

 

“Who you were. Who you are.” Jyn pushes a tendril of hair behind her ear and sticks her chin out at him. She’s small--a good seven inches shorter than he is, but she seems like a colossus when she does this. “You just said Cassian. Your name was Cassian. But not Cassian Andor. You never fully introduced yourself to me.”

 

“And that name means something to you?” he asks, his voice light.

 

“I run a bookshop, Cassian. Do you think I wouldn’t know you? Why didn’t you tell me?”

 

“I”m not that well known.”

 

“Your book is in the window display in my store,” she says in exasperation. “You’ve already won multiple awards for your first novel.” She ticks them off on her fingers. “The PEN/Faulker. Nomination for the National Book Award. Should I go on?”

 

He rubs the back of his head awkwardly, gripping Lian tightly with the other. “No, no. That should about cover it.”

 

Then she shifts closer. “Your university called to set up a time for your reading.” And Cassian realizes Draven had been playing him earlier. “So why didn’t you tell me?” she repeats. “You could have. You had all night to mention it. You had all day.”

 

He wants to consider his words; make a case, and it's what he would have done to anyone else. But she unnerves him. She has a way of seeing right through him. And so he only has the truth for her, and when he speaks, his heart pours out.

 

“There wasn’t a good moment, and honestly Jyn, I don’t feel like much of a writer these days,” he admits. “I feel like I put everything into that first book, you know? And now? Now I just feel a little empty. I sit at my computer and just watch the cursor blink. It’s hard to talk about being a writer when you can’t _write._ It’s hard to try to live up to _me_ , and it would have felt like . . . bragging if had made it a point to tell you I was _this writer_. As though that was important." And he looks at her, watches her swallow as she listens, and he says, "And I didn’t want to make it sound like a come on. Like I was trying to impress you.”

 

She says, “Oh,” and it’s subdued and quiet, like she’s disappointed in him, but he doesn’t know why.

 

Then she’s reaching her arms out, and he realizes that she wants her son. Leaning toward her, Cassian slowly unwinds the boy from around his neck, transferring him gently enough that he stays in sleep.

 

“Well,” Jyn says, her expression hooded, “have a goodnight, Cassian.” She doesn’t say _see you around_ this time like she did before, and he doesn’t get to say it back. It unsettles him a little, because this time it sounds like it really is goodbye.

 

“Good night,” he echos, because he's not sure what else to say, and he takes a step back, watching her and Liam vanish through the door until it shuts and he is left there on the street, standing alone once again.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An encounter in the street, and an accident in a bookshop.

Cassian keeps busy over the next week and a half before his reading at Kyber Books. The semester is in full swing, and he's busy with teaching his workshops and reading student papers and stories. Lara, Laura, and Rupert volunteer to help set-up for the reading and meet with him and Melshi in the afternoons to prepare posters and talk logistics, and Cassian tries not to think about Jyn.

 

In his free time, he walks alone around London to better get to know this city that will be his home for the next year. He catalogs the trees he recognizes (holly, willow, Japanese cherry) and looks up the ones that are unfamiliar (foxglove, grey alder, wych elm). He tries to learn the names of all the parks he can walk to from the front step of his flat, writes down the most interesting names of pubs (The Hung, Drawn, and Quartered; The Moon Under Water), and reads every blue plaque he encounters. On a free afternoon, he goes up to Abbey Road and watches people stop traffic as they pose in the famous crosswalk and leave flowers and folded notes against the studio wall. One day, he rides the Circle Line from Gloucester Road all the way back around to High Street Kensington just to do it, watching the quiet British faces amongst the boisterous bodies of tourists, especially the Americans and Australians who laugh and shout high above the din. He observes one girl, just a hair into her twenties, do the splits and twirl around a pole at the stop in Westminster, and Cassian tries to remember if he ever felt that young.

 

He walks by Jyn’s shop every day on his way back from teaching or a meeting, from buying groceries or grabbing a pint with Kay, and he can’t help but _look_. Look to see if she’s there stepping out the door, look to see if he can understand what mistake he made that night when the connection between them, sparking hot and wild like a live wire, went cold and dead.

   
It’s been a week since he watched her close her door, and he hasn't seen her or heard from her since. But logically he knows that there there is no reason that he would. She doesn’t have his number. He doesn’t have hers. He can’t very well just show up on her doorstep as though he means anything to her. And the one time he stops in her shop again (related to the reading, he tells himself), Bodhi is manning the till and explains to Cassian, without him having to ask, that Jyn is with Liam at the doctor for a bad case of the sniffles.

  
But he thinks, _what right do I have to know any of this, to even presume to check in?_ They have known each other only a few hours, he reminds himself. What does it matter if he feels like he’s known her his whole life?

  
And so he continues on, enjoying the camaraderie of his new colleagues, tackling the challenge in teaching his students, and enduring the quiet frustration of the blinking cursor on his computer where he writes and deletes a sentence, writes and deletes it again, and then wonders if he’s told all the stories within himself that are worth telling.

  
A distraction from this new routine comes in the form of Mara Jade, who arrives in London on a Wednesday. It turns out that Cassian quite likes playing tour guide for her because she actually plays tour guide for him for many of the places he’s yet to explore.

  
“Draven’s a twat if he thinks I have never been to London,” she tells him as they walk through Covent Garden on her first full day in town. They pick their way through antique bookstores, and she asks him about his students. She’s smart and sarcastic and good company, and she knows how to talk books and writing even if every other word out of her mouth seems to be curse word or a complaint about Luke Skywalker.

  
“I had known him all of three hours at that stupid conference when he proposed that we collaborate on something together!” she says as the ride the Tube back to Kensington. “What could I possibly have in common with a bloody California farmboy? I’m from Inverness. My family _owns a castle_. I write poetry and he writes about wave boarding.”

  
Cassian starts to explain to her that the Skywalker farm is actually a ranch and a vineyard and that Luke's spent more time in Santa Barbara surfing and writing than he has working the land with his hands, though he still has interest in wines (so many of his essays are about just that). But Mara somehow already knows that, and says, “And he’s always going on and on about how he really is still, at heart, a vintner, _like his father before him._ It’s bloody exhausting.”

 

“Maybe he likes you?” Cassian finally offers, but when he says this to her, Mara splutters and changes the subject to what a disaster of a human being Lord Byron was instead, launching into a tangent tirade about how the hipster poets she had to deal with on the regular were basically the same bloody thing as the romantics and could they just _stop_?

  
Dusk settles in when they get back to the edge of Kensington, and Cassian's stomach growls loud enough to remind him that now is a good time for dinner. While he's been a poor tour guide for Mara, there is at least one thing he can show his guest--a good meal in his neighborhood.

 

  
"I am not an expert on kebabs," he says as he pushes open the door to Star Kebab, a little take away restaurant just minutes from his flat, "but these will be a life changing experience."

 

  
If Mara is skeptical, any doubt goes the way of the dodo after her first bite of her chicken tikka kebab. The garlic mayo drips down the side of her mouth as she wipes it away and says with unladylike grace, "Fuck me, these are good!"

 

Cassian chuckles as Mara repeats the sentiment, but then the laugh dies in his throat when, a block away from her hotel, Cassian sees a familiar set of eyes of green eyes tracking his approach. And then he sees that Jyn is not alone. There’s a coldness that swallows him, and he feels his body stiffen even as his feet keep moving him forward.

 

He knows, too, how he and Mara must look to her because it looks eerily similar to what Jyn looks like to him right now.

 

Her hair is loose on her shoulders, soft and curling at the ends. Her eyes are lined in kohl and her mouth is soft and red, and she is wearing a navy blue dress with a pashmina draped around her shoulders. She looks nothing like the Jyn he met at the bookstore or at the market, nothing like the woman who played football barefoot on a Hyde Park pitch or who sat across from him laughing and yelling and looking into his face and _knowing_ him, but he finds that each version of Jyn draws him to her in the same way, each version strange and beautiful and exciting. And Cassian feels scrambled like an egg because he can’t quite understand why she does this to him, why he can’t stop thinking about her, why the ache he feels now is a wound torn open again because he sees that she is seated outside at a restaurant across from a sandy-haired man, a half-empty bottle of wine between them, the green glass glowing with the faint reflection of candlelight.

 

When he gets within earshot of her, the compulsion to explain comes over him to explain. But she tears away her gaze as he draws nearer, lifts her drink to her lips, and laughs at something her companion says. The hurt spreads out cold and hard in his chest, and he can only keep walking past them as though she’s a stranger.

  
He and Mara continue down the avenue in silence. When they are within sight of her hotel, any hopes that he has that he appeared unruffled and cool drop away.

 

"An ex?" Mara asks blandly as she walks into the lobby, though the question screams that she knows there’s a story there.

 

Cassian’s shoulder slump, and he can’t help the sigh that escapes him. "Not an ex,” he says, his vision going unfocused for a moment. “An almost."

 

  
+

 

  
During Friday's workshop, Lara and Harry are in a heated debate about the ending of _Love in the Time of Cholera._ Cassian knows he should step in and steer the conversation back to craft, but his focus is shot. So he lets them argue about happy beginnings and sad endings while he scribbles notes in the margins of his planner and thinks about which excerpt from his novel he should read on Tuesday.

 

"I think it's just a shame that they couldn't be with each other until the end," Lara says, smacking her hand on the table. "It didn't have to be that way!"

 

"Florentino was a liar," Harry says. "I mean, and he fucked a bunch of prostitutes!”

 

“Jesus Christ, Harry,” Lara says, disgusted.

 

Harry doubles down then “I don't think he deserved her."

 

“Fermina broke up with him first!” Rupert interjects.

 

“Because she realized she didn’t really know him!” Laura fires, joining the fray. “They were practically strangers! How can you fall in love with someone you barely know?”

 

  
"I like that Marquez compared love to a consumptive disease," Simone, who Cassian has only seen dressed in black, says dryly. "That seems pretty accurate."

 

They keep arguing about the details, and he presses his fingers to the bridge of his nose, wondering how long it will be into the semester before they realize that it’s not the content itself that matters but the meaning of that content.

 

When Lara’s voice gets fevered and high pitched, and she sounds on the verge of tears, Cassian finally raises a hand to calm things down.

 

“I think that’s enough of the novel discussion for today. You all seem very passionate about it, which is great, but let’s change tracks and talk basics of craft, yes?”

 

Lara slumps back into her seat and Harry looks smug though he’s won some victory, though there was no battle to begin with.

 

“So what are the questions we have to ask ourselves when starting any story?” Cassian asks. It’s a basic question, but one that many new writers forgot to ask themselves. Perhaps it’s one he’s forgotten himself, too. “Any ideas?”

 

“Why this story?” Simone says without preamble. “And why now?”

 

“Exactly,” he says, puncturing his notepad with his pen. “The unwritten rule that you should apply to every story you write should start with this idea: that after today, after this moment, _nothing will ever be the same again_.”

 

And if Cassian is thinking then of a woman in a bookshop on a crisp fall day when the words leave his mouth, he keeps it to himself.

 

  
+

 

  
The night of the reading is cool and dry, and Cassian pulls his leather jacket tighter around himself and regrets not getting a wool trench instead. He arrived at Kyber Books and takes in the warmth of the storefront. The display window is frosted around the corners, and he sees his book, _La Frontera,_ piled high in stacks, a hand-stenciled sign next to them saying, "Meet the author this evening!" His hand settles on the knob to the door, but he stands frozen a moment, unsure what he wants out of this night.

 

Bodhi's face appears then and shakes Cassian out of his revelry.

  
"You're early!" Bodhi says, checking his wristwatch and welcoming Cassian inside.

  
"Sorry," Cassian says, the bell jingling behind him as he steps in.

  
"No worries, mate," Bodhi says. "It's actually great that you did. Jyn wanted me to ask you to sign a few copies for the shop to sell. D'you mind?"

  
"Not at all," he says, looking around for her.

“Jyn’s at the warehouse picking up some more inventory for tonight,” Bodhi explains. “Usually I do that kind of thing, but she Insisted on doing it herself. But it’s just around the corner. She’ll be back soon.” Bodhi leads Cassian to a small back room, still pleasantly chattering away.

 

"Liam is with a sitter tonight since this is a special event, though he might make a special appearance to say goodnight to his mum." In the back, there is a small desk, and on top if it, a stack ten books high--all copies of his novel. Bodhi gestures for Cassian to sit, and he goes to remove his jacket before he does.

 

"Oi, mate, that's a smart looking jacket. Where'd you get it? I have been looking for something like that myself." Bodhi gestures at it, and Cassian hands it to him so that he can try it on.

 

Bodhi shrugs it on and examines his reflection in the glass of an antique book case.

  
"Does this make me look morally ambiguous?" he asks.

 

Cassian squints at him, confused. "Is that what you are going for?" he asks.

  
"Yeah! Exactly!" Bodhi laughs and does a half turn, admiring the striping the goes down the arms of the jacket. "A little dangerous around the edges and all. That's how you look it in. I bet the ladies love it."

  
"That wasn't my original intent when I bought it..." Cassian says, embarrassed, but Bodhi just laughs and says, "Just come out front when you're done, yeah?"

  
Cassian runs his hands through his hair before he pulls out a chair to sit. The desk is a soft sea green, chipped and dented in spots, but well loved. There are piles of paper everywhere. Handwritten notes in what he guesses are Jyn’s scribbles, invoices, and book reviews torn from magazines. All these things make up Jyn Erso, he thinks, and he touches the edge of the papers as though he can learn her through osmosis.

  
Pictures are tapped up on the wall, mostly photos of Liam--as a baby growing into a toddler--of a little boy adored by his mother. In one picture, they’re at a rocky beach by the ocean--Brighton, he guesses. In another, Liam is in a high chair, smiling, pureed fruit smeared across chubby cheeks. Then Cassian sees one of Jyn holding Liam, his downy head against her lips. Her eyes are closed, and the fringe of her hair obscures part of her face. The edges of the photo are soft and out of focus, and he gets that feeling again in his body, like he’s being swept away by a riptide. He reaches out, unable to resist the urge to touch the photograph. There's something intimate and unguarded about this moment captured in time. There’s something in the composition, in the way she looks so calm and safe that makes Cassian think that this photo was taken by someone who loved her, and he wonders who that person could be, who that person was.

 

He hears the bell at the front door and remembers then that he has books to sign, and as he sets to work and puts the flourish on the tenth and last book, he hears her voice from the other room.

  
"I'm just going to pop on to the back and get the rest of the books."

 

He stands, pushing the chair back, nervous. The sound of the legs make a terrible scraping noise against the floor that sets his teeth on edge. Jyn, of course, hears him before she see him, before she even gets to the back room, and he fidgets, wondering if she’ll turn back when she sees him. Her steps slow, and her expression is guarded, but she appears at last.

 

"Hello," he says.

 

"Hello," she echoes, her tone formal and stiff. "Bodhi didn't tell me anyone was back here."

 

"I got here early." He points to the pile of books. “I just finished signing the books, like you asked.”

 

“Well,” she says, shifting from one foot to another, “thanks. You can head out front now and wait there if you want. Bodhi’s put out some tea and biscuits.”

 

He should leave, but his feet feel stuck to the ground. Jyn’s frozen in place too, staring at him. He opens his mouth to speak, but words fail him, a theme for him as of late.

 

“Excuse me,” she says, breaking the awkward silence when he won’t move, squeezing past him in the small room. “I need to get back there.” She goes to a narrow aisle just beyond the desk that is bracketed by tall bookshelves and searches upward with her eyes. After a long moment, she speaks again, not looking at him. “How was your date?” she asks, casually. “She was pretty.”

 

“It wasn’t a date,” he says, his throat tight. A hum begins to build in his brain. It makes his eyes hurt.

 

“Is that so?” she says, as though she doesn’t believe him, rising up on her tiptoes, her fingers walking along the spine of a book just out of reach. Cassian watches her strain, dust falling into her hair like snow. “That’s interesting,” she says, tone neutral, maddening.

 

“How was yours?” he dares to ask.

 

“It was nice,” she says. His fingers curl into his palms and he bites his lip, nods to himself at the confirmation.

 

“You looked you were having a nice time,” he continues.

 

“I don’t get out often, not without Liam,” she says, her voice far away. “It was nice to get a meal out. It was nice to feel like just a woman again for a few hours and not just like a mum.”

 

Jyn grunts then, unable to reach the book. Cassian is tall enough that he could pluck it out easily, but she won't ask for his help.

 

“Would you like me to get that for you?” he says, still lingering. “What you’re doing looks dangerous.”

 

“I’m fine,” she grits, putting her foot up on a lower shelf to give herself a little more height. “I just  . . . about have it.”

 

He watches then as she pulls on the high shelf, her foot on a lower plank. As though in slow motion, he sees the bookcase become unmoored as it begins to tip toward her, books creaking against the wood and sliding, ready to crash on her head. Her name is out of his mouth before he realizes that he’s consciously saying it, and he’s next to her in a second, shielding her as books come tumbling down on his head. His arms arch over her body at the same time his hands brace the falling bookcase. Jyn stumbles backward toward him and knocks into his chest, pushing him against the bookcase at his back. A book from that shelf hits him in the head and he yelps in surprise.

 

Though he’s blocked most of the avalanche, Jyn still gives out a small little cry of surprise, a gasp that seems to take the air out of her chest a they slump to the ground together. His arms have come to rest on top of her shoulders, her brown hair fanned out on the sleeves of his blazer.

 

When the dust settles, Cassian asks, “Are you okay?” a murmur against her ear. He’s dazed but fully aware of her weight in his arms, and he’s unsure of how to move or not move.

 

Jyn turns her head to look at him, and he can only see her profile shadowed with highlights from the light of the desk lamp. The softness of her eyes surprises him, and he watches as gratitude and confusion and something deep and dark flashes in her eyes that makes him think that if he kissed her right now, she’d kiss him back. She bites her top lip, and she opens her mouth to speak.

 

“Cassian--” she starts, and her face is unguarded like it was in the photo, her hard edges a little smoother, a little less sharp. He thinks of her words from before: _It was nice to feel like just a woman again for a few hours_. And he thinks, _she was a woman, certainly. A woman he hasn’t stopped thinking about, as hard as he has tried._

 

He dares then to reach out to her, to touch her cheek with his hand. Her eyes blink shut, and he swallows hard, his fingers guiding her face slowly, quietly toward his.

 

But these moments never last for very long. They snap into existence and vanish just as quickly. And when they are gone, they are gone.

 

“Jyn?” Bodhi’s footsteps interrupt them, each thump barreling louder and louder toward them until he’s in the room and saying, “Is everything okay?” His eyes go wide as he sees them, and Cassian moves quickly to help Jyn to her feet.

 

“We’re fine,” Jyn says, but her voice is shaky. “Can you help me clean this up before the reading, though, Bodhi? It’s a mess.”

 

“I can help,” Cassian starts, but she waves a hand in the air and tells him that _no,_ _it’s alright, Bodhi can help and he should get up and clean himself up to get ready for his reading._

 

“You’re the marquee, after all,” she says, looking at his ear, looking past him. "You need some time to compose yourself."

 

“One of your students is here, too, Cassian,” Bodhi says. “Lara or Laura? She just came in when I heard the crash. She seemed anxious to find you.”

 

Cassian begins to say, “She can wait,” because she can, but like the next domino to fall, Lara steps into the backroom, relief spreading across her young face.

 

“Professor Andor!” she says, grabbing his arm. “There you are! Professor Draven was looking for you, and so was I.” Lara begins to lead him away by the arm, and finally, he lets himself be led. It’s only then that he sees Jyn look at him again, a movement he catches out of the corner of his eye. Her gaze is heavy and dark, but it’s steady. The way she looks at him now makes him feel exposed, like he's an open book, like she can see his beginning and know his end. And as Lara leads him out of the room, he wonders what Jyn can really read in him, if she sees herself in his story, not just in the margins or as a footnote, but the way he’s begun to see her since the day he met her: on every page.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Star Kebab](https://www.yelp.com/biz/star-kebab-house-london-2) is a real place. Eat there if you find yourself in London.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A reading in a bookshop, a walk to the warehouse, and an elevator made for two.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has read and commented and kudos so far!

Cassian finishes his first novel when he is twenty-two. Not _La Frontera_ but a little novela printed on an ink jet and bound in leather with gold lettering that reads “Andor” on the spine. It is his master’s thesis, a story about a boy from Nogales, Mexico, who loses his parents not to war or drugs but to stomach cancer and domestic violence at the hands of a volatile stepfather who gives more bruises than a boy of twelve could ever give back or should take.

 

He never publishes it, not even after his editor begs for another book soon after _La Frontera_ begins to rake in the awards and profits. It’s always felt too personal, too close, and so he buries it, so to speak, like he did his parents, somewhere in the Arizona desert. Its cemetery plot is a storage unit in Tucson, and its headstone, the cactus on the sign at Saguaro Storage. He wonders sometimes if it’s the reason he hasn’t been able to write since, if that book is like some cursed idol punishing him for abandoning it.

 

It’s not soon after that he puts it away for good that the offer to teach in London for a year arrives in his inbox. There’s no hesitation in taking it. He takes it because London is far away, and that’s where he wants to to be--far away from where he is then, because he hopes that it will give him a new outlook and a fresh start. It could have been a huge mistake, both personally and professional, but it’s not, at least not so far. Because it just so happens that it is in London that he meets Jyn Erso. London, where he stands now, with a toddler tugging at his hands and saying, “Hey, mister!”

 

Cassian looks down and it’s Liam Erso awake past his bedtime.

 

Jyn’s little boy pulls at his fingers again to get his attention, and Cassian crouches and meets him at eye level. “Hello, young man.” Liam’s little hand is still gripped around three of Cassian’s fingers, and he smiles at Cassian and shows his full mouth of baby teeth. Cassian can’t help but smile back. There’s a sweetness to him that is still unblemished by age, and in him, Cassian sees something that is only found in children: the wonder of discovering everything for the very first time.

 

“I know you!” Liam exclaims as a woman--the sitter Cassian supposes--rushes up, panting. “You’re the mister my mum knows.” Cassian shifts his weight from one foot to another and nods at the child. The room feels bright with light and noise, and it would be easy to be overstimulated or overwhelmed, but he feels content; calm.

 

“I’m so sorry!” The young woman rushing after Jyn’s son sweeps Liam up in her arms and Cassian finally feels his hand go free from a toddler’s surprisingly strong grip. “He’s usually so shy of strangers!”

 

“That’s alright,” Cassian says gently. “We know each other. We’re friends, aren’t we, Liam?”

 

Liam’s face lights up as though the idea is something brand new to him--and maybe it is--and he shouts it so that everyone in the room can hear, “Yes! You’re my friend!”

 

The sitter looks relieved to not be impinging on a stranger, and asks him “Do you know where his mother is? He refuses to go to bed unless he gets to kiss her goodnight, and he’s in that stubborn phase and will not take no for an answer, though he gives it often enough!”

 

Cassian turns to point her to the backroom where he knows Jyn to be, but as he does, Liam struggles and squirms out of her arms and breaks free, sprinting across the room and into the waiting arms of his mother. She wraps him up and twirls him around until his laughter is the only sound in the room worth hearing. After a smattering of kisses she puts him down and raises her eyes to look at Cassian. He’s caught staring; but she’s staring back, too, her green eyes shining gold in the spotlights that have been set up near the lectern where he’ll be reading. He wonders how long she’s been standing there.

 

When he looks at her, she feels like the only person in the room. He can still feel the weight of her in his arms, the warmth of the imprint she left as his legs take him toward her. He thinks about the last time he had held someone like that and how he was the one later to use those same arms to push her away as he said goodbye in front of his empty house and drove himself to the airport.

 

The bell at the door jingles behind him, and the volume of voices in the room fills up as more and more people step inside. Before he can reach Jyn, he feels hands pull at his forearms. At first he thinks it’s Lara, pushing and pulling at him, and he almost throws her off, but when he looks up, it’s Mara.

 

“Fucking hell, Andor,” she says, circling him like a shark and gesturing at the growing crowd. “What a turnout! If I had known, I wouldn’t have agreed to read my bloody poetry tonight.”

 

“Stage fright?” he asks, surprised. He takes a moment then and glances again toward Jyn, but she’s turned her head away, her attentions trained back on Liam.

 

“Nah,” Mara says with a shake of her red hair. “I’m just a misanthrope.”

 

Cassian laughs and then sees Mara’s face shift suddenly, and he turns to see what has made her go all coiled and tight like a spring.

 

“Mara!” It’s Luke Skywalker, waving his hand and coming at them from ten paces away.

 

“If you’ll excuse me,” she says abruptly, vanishing behind a cookbook display showcasing _The Art of French Cooking_ and a book of _1001 Curries_ , “I have someone I need to not talk to about collaboration. Again.”

 

Cassian spins and watches her go, spins and sees Jyn putting Liam back in the sitter’s arms, and spins and is stopped by Lara with a stack of his paperback novel in her arms.

 

“The reading is about to start, Professor,” she says, a cheerful, expectant smile spreading on her face. He takes an instinctive step back. Lara gestured toward the front of the room to the three reserved seats: One for himself and one for Melshi and Mara, who’d both read before him.

 

He nods at his student and pulls at his tie following her to his seat. Nerves always plague him before public speaking, though when he gets down to the nitty gritty, gets in front of a classroom or a auditorium full of people, his confidence is usually restored when he is able to focus on his words. But it feels different today, and he unconsciously curls and uncurls the sheets of paper in his hands and tries not to look over his shoulder too many times to look at the people gathered here.

 

The lights dim, and Melshi walks up to the lectern. His prose is spare and clean, a muscular bit of fiction from his first short story collection about a one-legged man waiting for his wife to return from war. He has a light touch with effective imagery and dots the landscape of his story with descriptions of heather and peat from his native Scotland. Cassian’s not familiar with Melshi’s work, but he thinks after this, he will catch up.  

 

Mara follows with three poems, three surprisingly romantic poems considering the facade she put on; unsurprisingly violent too, for the same reason. Her reading is commanding and has none of the sing-songy quality of most poets. Luke Skywalker in particular watches her, rapt, stars in her eyes, and Cassian thinks his friend is a goner. And by the way Mara studiously avoids Luke’s gaze, she might be too after she stops protesting so much and so loudly to everyone who will listen.

 

And then it’s his turn at last, and his palms sweat. Cassian stands, straightening his shoulders, and makes his way to the lectern and the lights. The crowd is full of familiar and unfamiliar faces. Kay is there, as is Draven, Chirrut, Baze, and Luke; a handful of his students huddled together in the back row, and then there is Jyn at her till. She’s half in shadow, standing, her face pressed at a tilt into one hand, and his nerves rumble back to life.

 

“Good evening,” he starts and is welcomed by polite clapping. “I’ll be reading tonight from my novel, _La Frontera_ . This section I will be reading takes place during the confrontation between one of the protagonists--Estrella--and the _coyote,_ or human smuggler, Ochoa.”

 

And so Cassian smooths the paper with his hands and begins to read the familiar words of his own story, and he drifts away into his words, only glancing up occasionally to breathe.  
 

> _“Who are you?” Ochoa said._
> 
> _The old coyote did not remember her at all, but Estrella would make him remember. He had taken everything from her--her mother, her father, Camilo--and she would make him remember every bit of flesh he’d destroyed, every breath that he had taken and that she had been denied._
> 
> _The hour had come at last, and one of them would not come out of it alive._
> 
> _“You know who I am,” she said._
> 
> _The abandoned refinery behind Ochoa billowed with smoke as it continued to burn, and ash rained down on them both. But even that was not enough to blot out the sky above._ _The desert sun along la frontera was brutal and unforgiving, even now, and it made the bleached whites of Ochoa’s clothes glow an ungodly color. He was a monster in white, alive and real before her eyes. Ripped out of her nightmares, he no longer a ghost from her childhood._
> 
> _After a moment, she saw the flicker of recognition in his eyes, and he cocked the gun at her. “La niña,” he said. The gun wavered in his hand._
> 
> _“Yes,” Estrella said. She could taste the blood in her mouth from the split in her lip. “La niña. The daughter of Gabriel and Luz.”_
> 
> _The coyote smiled, grim and firm. “What could you possibly do to me?” Ochoa spat, his laughter cold as the day was hot. He drew closer. “You have no weapon. No water. No way out.”_
> 
> _“If I die in this desert, you die with me,” she said. “You die the way you let my father die.” Her voice wavered. “Sick. Alone.”_
> 
> _“He was never going to make it to the border!” Ochoa said._
> 
> _“He was your friend!” she cried._
> 
> _“He was a liability.” Then a twisted grin appeared on his face. “And you are just like him.”_
> 
> _She saw his finger move against the gun, and Estrella prepared to lunge out of its way. She refused to die and die by his hand. She had been born in a land that was moss green and nameless until almost the day she left, and she refused to die in this barren place against the yellow sand. Even If the bullet caught her, she thought, she could still run; she could still fight._
> 
> _A gun fired. But when the shot came, she felt nothing. Instead, Estrella saw Ochoa drop, blood blossoming like a rose on his shoulder, his expression blank as he collapsed._
> 
> _And like that, the nightmare was over._
> 
> _Then she saw why. Behind Ochoa, stepping out of the smoke of the burning oil drum, bloody and limping but alive, was Camilo Aguilar, the border patrol guard who had freed her, who had trusted her when no one else had. He looked like a man who had fallen down a well and had clawed his way back to the top. He looked as beautiful as anyone Estrella had ever seen._
> 
> _She ran to him, not thinking, each step pulling her closer and close to him. Her lungs burned, but she was alive. He was alive. “You came back for me,” she said. And she stumbled one last step into his arms, smiling like a child. “You came back.”_

 

Cassian stops there and looks up blinking. There’s applause, which swells, and a whistle of approval from Luke, but something stirs uncomfortable from inside of him until he shifts his gaze and locks eyes with Jyn. Her eyes are soft and focused so fully on him that his heart does a leap. Her hand has shifted from her cheek to her chest, and he can almost imagine that he can hear her breathe as he notes each rise and fall of her chest.

 

That he wants to walk over to her is a given, to let himself drift toward her shore like a leaf in a river, but he can’t because there’s a planned Q&A for after, as his student Rupert reminds him as he tries to go to her. But the Q&A is at least short and small, and after a few questions for Melshi and Mara and the few usual ones about how his own story influenced his work, Jyn comes to him.

 

“Do you have any tips for writers who find themselves unable to write?” she asks, walking down the center aisle, her elbow bent and her hand raised. Her tone is even, but there’s still a defiant jut of her chin as she passes Draven. It makes Cassian smile.

 

There’s an appreciative murmur of commiseration from at least half the room, as almost everyone there is a writer or aspiring to be one. It’s a good question--a question Cassian has asked himself repeatedly over the last year.

 

“I keep writing,” Mara answers without pause. “Vomit out the words, throw them against the wall until something sticks. Writers write. If you don’t, then what are you? Even if it’s bad, you keep writing and practicing until it’s good.”

 

Melshi takes his turn and offers something different. “Find something or someone who inspires you. A muse, if you will.” Melshi smiles a little too wolfishly at Jyn, and Cassian feels himself frown.  

 

But Jyn is only looking at Cassian, waiting for his reply as though his answer is a test she wants him to pass. There’s a retort ready on his lips-- _if someone has the answer, let me know!_ but it’s too flip and unhelpful. And so he looks at her again, at the tiredness in her face but also at the fire that makes her radiant to him if to no one else, and he finds the answer that’s escaped him until now.

 

“You have to find something in your life that makes you feel passionate again,” he says, watching her expression shift and change like the face of moon going from half to full in the span of a half second. ”About writing itself, certainly, but it can be about anything, really. A good meal or your child. About characters you love. A subject that moves you and makes you want to know more. And then you have to just make yourself write. Writing and creating will at times feel like homework, but anything worth doing is hard. You have to have the love for it and remember why you wanted to do it; why you loved it in the first place.”

 

+

 

There’s talk of the pub after the reading, Luke Skywalker pressing most for it, his eyes pinned to Mara who looks both cornered but not altogether unhappy either. Cassian sees her even smile to herself when Luke isn’t looking. Kay presses him to come--this was his reading and his idea after all--but Cassian declines politely and slowly works his way around the shop, folding up chairs and carrying unsold books back to the counter.

 

“You don’t have to do that,” Bodhi offers, taking a stack of _La Frontera_ from Cassian’s arms and putting them into a box on the floor.

 

“I want to help,” he replies. He sees Bodhi glance at the crowd of people making ready to leave for a pint. “Why don’t you let me finish up here and you can go with everyone else. I think you all got along so well at the pub last time after football practice. I’m sure everyone would be happy if you joined them.”

 

“You think?” Bodhi asks, rubbing the back of his neck nervously.

 

“Yes, go, please. The least I can do is help clean up since I set this up.” Cassian pauses, then bites his lip self-consciously. “Will you let Jyn know?”

 

Bodhi raises and eyebrow and Cassian watches Bodhi’s roving eye searching for and finding Jyn. “Ah, Jyn. Yes,” he says, his eyes darting back to Cassian’s face. There’s something there--a question, an assumption--but Bodhi’s polite enough not to stick his nose in someone else’s business. “I’ll let her know.” But Cassian does see Bodhi’s cheek quirk in a grin--and Cassian doesn’t miss the implication, but he gladly takes the thump on the back that Bodhi offers in friendship as he skips off to join the others, dropping a  “Thanks, mate” as he leaves to the jingling of the bell.

 

It’s well past closing time, so when it remains just him and Jyn in the shop, she turns down the light and flips the sign on the door from “open” to “close.” Her back is to him when a car drives down the lonely street. Its headlights shine through the picture window and the glass of the door, and bathes Jyn in orange light.

 

“You didn’t have to stay,” she says at last, her back still to him. “It’s not much, and it’s nothing I can’t handle.” She finally turns around and gives him a shrug.

 

“You don’t have to do everything yourself,” he says. “I’m happy to help.”

 

“Featured authors don’t usually do the grunt work after a reading, not even the bad ones. It’s not comfortable or glamorous work, exactly.”

 

He takes a step closer. _A leaf on the river. The pull of the water._ “I said I want to help. It’s okay to get help, Jyn.”

 

She considers him, her expression guarded. But there is still the light in her eyes, and even the dark can’t hide it. She licks her lips and steps toward him. “I’m not used to people sticking around,” she says.

 

His head feels fuzzy, his chest warm. He drifts dangerously into her personal space, but she doesn’t move away when he does. “Well, I’m here.”

 

She smiles and she smiles at him, and all Cassian sees is gold.

 

+

 

They work silently together for the next thirty minutes, boxing up unsold copies of his novel, Mara’s slim and spare chapbooks, and Melshi’s thick short story collection. The chairs are folded up and pushed into the back room near the collapsed bookcase, and it’s almost 11pm when they are finally done.

 

Cassian grabs his leather jacket and heads to the front when he sees Jyn loading a hand cart with boxes.

 

“What’s that for?” he asks.

 

“I have to return them to the warehouse. It’s just down the street, in the mews.” She pushes the dolly forward and angles it so that it rests on its wheels. There is a stray curl of hair in her eyes, and she blows it out of the way. “You can head home now. This is the last of it, and then I can close up shop.”

 

He blurts out these words next, and it sounds more wounded than he means it to. “Are you trying to get rid of me?” She looks surprised, and Cassian swerves to correct himself, not wanting to come on too strong, to scare her away. “That is, I can get out of your way, if that’s what you want. I don’t want to be a pest, but if this is the last thing, let me help. You have a little boy at home. If I can make this go faster, the sooner you can get back to him.”

 

Jyn drops her chin to her chest for a moment, then looks up, nods. “Alright, then, Mr. Andor. I’ll do as you say.” She rests the dolly back on its wheels for a moment, then sweeps by him, giving his forearm a squeeze. He freezes and he feels like a teenager again. She looks at him shy, then stutters out, “Let me just get my coat.”

 

Her coat is more practical than his, and she seems amused that he’s shivering on their walk over to the warehouse.

 

“Too many years living in the desert?” she asks.

 

“Thin blood,” he says by way of agreement.

 

The walk to the warehouse is as quick as she said it would be. Little more than an old carriage house, it’s equipped with a padlock to the door that Jyn unlocks with a brass key and inside is a small freight elevator that seems on the verge of breakdown.

 

“Is this safe?” he asks, eyeing it with concern.

 

“The lift?” she asks, pressing the call button. “Safe enough, I suppose. Better than having to carry these all up and down the stairs, wouldn’t you say?”

 

When it arrives, they squeeze in together tight, and the dim light bulb flickers as they rise to the second floor. Alone with her here in the narrow, dusty elevator, the light playing on her face, Cassian feels moved to confession--not the Catholic kind but one from his heart--but confess what? It is too early for love, though he feels the danger and the thrill of it creeping upon him with each passing minute in her presence. Is it that he wants to confess to her how impossibly human she makes him feel and how much he has needed that again after he has closed himself off bit by bit as each year passed marking another anniversary of the death of his parents?

 

But the ride up stays silent save for the grind of gears and belts that takes them to their destination, and besides a few words about where to put the books away, there absence of conversation vibrates between them. With the work done, he knows he’s run out of excuses to stay in her company. Dragging the dolly behind him, he presses for the elevator to open, motions for her to step in first. It’s a short ride, he think, and then they will part at the door, and words escape him like water through his fingers

 

“I enjoyed your reading tonight,” she says, breaking the silence. “That last part--it’s one of my favorite passages from your book.”

 

Cassian looks at the floor, and something stirs within him, deep inside. “When did you read it?” he asks.

 

She bites her thumb, lost in a memory. “When I was pregnant with Liam,” she says, looking up at him. “The doctors put me on bed rest for the last month, and I read a lot during those last weeks. Just me and my books and the baby in my belly.” The image of Jyn, belly rounded and tucked under blankets, his book balanced between her hands, sweeps into his mind and sticks to his brain.

 

And then the elevator shakes and screeches to a halt. The violence of the stop pulls Cassian off his feet, and he stumbles into Jyn’s arms. The doors remain closed and they appear to be stuck, but the last thing he’s thinking about. She catches him, palms splayed against his chest, and he can feel how her hands shake against him. Her expression is searching, and that _look_ is there like it was just hours before when she had turned her head toward him in her shop, waiting.

 

He thinks this time, he cannot waste his chance, and moves carefully, gathering his footing and moving one hand, then the next, testing carefully if this is what she wants, too. His left hand comes to rest on her waist, the other on the small of her back, and he pulls her an inch in closer, waits to see if she resists. When she doesn’t, he lets himself fall into her and into the moment. He hears himself say her name; he hears her say his, and they are echoes of one another.

 

Her mouth is soft and pliant, and she yields and shifts at his touch, her breath hitching in her throat. She smells of baby powder and the pages of antique books, like earl gray tea and sugar. Cassian feels her hands curl into fists and pull on his jacket, and he pulls her in closer as though he can’t bare to have any space exist between him and her.

 

Cassian’s had his fair share of relationships or brushes with love in his life: the first crush at eleven that made him sweat and his voice crack; the girl he first kissed under the bleachers after a basketball game when he was fourteen; the first serious relationship at the end of his junior year in college, the girl he thought he loved until they discovered they had nothing in common, and the woman in Tucson who watched him drive away from her. Each one had been different in some ways; the same in others. But Jyn--he can’t explain how he feels about her except that she feels _true_ , as though she’s the universe’s answer to all the questions he’s ever had but never though tot ask.

 

When she pulls away, he almost can’t bear it, but she stiffens in his arms and he lets go like he’s burned her.

 

She’s swallowing hard, shaking her head. Her face is flushed and he can see the fight or flight response kicking in. “That was wrong,” she starts, embarrassment changing to anger. “We shouldn’t have done that.”

 

His head whirls in confusion. “What do you mean? Jyn--”

 

She turns to the control panel of the elevator and begins to press all the buttons, throwing the control panel open and flipping on the flashlight app on her phone to peer inside. Her hands move quickly and she’s making a mess of things.

 

“Jyn,” he says again, and reaches out to her. He can still taste her, and his pulse is still too quick, throbbing until his head almost aches from it. “What did I do wrong?”

 

She whips her head to face him. Her face is hard, her mouth tight, but her voice is strangled with emotion that bleeds through. “You can’t keep giving me these mixed signals, Cassian. I’m not someone you can play with. I have a child. I have a life. I’m not wasting anymore of it with people who don’t think I’m worth their time.”

 

“Play with?” His lungs feel punctured, and it’s hard to breathe. “Jyn, I’m not playing. I didn’t understand what happened after that night at the pub, but tell me and let me fix it.”

 

“You can’t tell me you’re not interested one minute and then kiss me the next.”

 

He balks, reeling in surprise. “Not interested? When did I say I wasn’t interested?” If anything, he’s been afraid of how obvious he has been.

 

“Then why did you tell me that night that you, and I quote, ‘Didn’t want it to seem like a come on’?”

 

“Because I didn’t! You’re not someone I just want to flirt with, Jyn. I . . .”

 

She splutters and slams her hand against the metal panel. The elevator roars back to life, and the doors squeak open. “What is it about you writers and all your _words?_ You can’t talk your way out of this now, Cassian! I heard what you said, loud and clear.”

 

“Clearly not!” he says in frustration. And he realizes then faintly that her anger just might mean that she feels about him the way he feels about her, and he measures his words again. “Jyn, there’s a reason I’m a writer and not a public speaker." The air vibrates between them just before Jyn breaks out into a laugh.

 

He takes her hand. “Jyn, please. I am being sincere. I like you." He swallows hard, his heart in his throat. "Very much.” The doors to the elevator close again, and the air grows hot between their bodies. “I want to see you every minute I’m awake. I want to talk to you, get to know you. I haven’t stopped thinking about you since we met. ”

 

She considers him, and he feels his stomach turn over. “Show me,” she says quietly but firmly. He feels her arms reach around his neck, her fingers walking across his back and drawing his head down toward her.

 

“Show you?”

 

Her voice is husky. "Yes," she says. "I'm sick of words."

 

The light in the elevator flickers, shadows dancing across her face, her expression at once bold and careful. She’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, and he takes his turn and pulls her closer. Cassian wants to kiss her until the sun comes up, until the moon disappears from the sky. Maybe this is just a moment. Maybe it will be the only time for them, but here, alone with her, he’ll take what they have now, her skin warm against his. He’ll take it all.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahoy, total fluff be next so thanks for sticking around! 
> 
> You can find me on tumblr at @operaticspacetrash


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fluff City, UK.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story was just supposed to be fluff. Well, here's the fluff! Enjoy! Thanks for all the comments and kudos and for anyone just out there reading it! I hope you enjoy this final installment.

Cassian can’t let go of her hand and Jyn can’t let go of his as they half run, half walk back to the bookshop, stopping to neck against ivy-covered brick walls, hiding themselves in the shadows like teenagers out past curfew. Cassian wants to bottle up the sound of her joy, the way it bubbles forth from her mouth in little gasps as he tries to find a spot on her throat that he hasn’t yet kissed.

 

Jyn grasps at him, her greedy hands sneaking up underneath his shirt where she’s pulled it out in the back. Her fingernails rake against his skin and he arches into her, temporarily overcome. And then there’s a pause, and their bodies are still against each other, tangled up up in an embrace that feels almost tender. Jyn slides her hands out from underneath his shirt and reaches up to bracket his face. “Come back to my flat?” she asks breathlessly. “Come up for . . . tea?”

 

He nods wordlessly and is rewarded with the upward curl of her lips. He presses his forehead to hers, and he feels peace settle over him like a fog.

 

At her door, Jyn fumbles with her keys, and she is half drunk with laughter. Cassian snakes his hands around her waist and holds her still as she tries to put the key into the lock, and when she drops the keyring, he catches it before it hits the ground. “Need some help?” he breathes into her ear, and she wiggles in his arms until she’s completely turned around, back to the door.

 

“Yes,” she says, pulling his mouth down to meet hers. “Please.”

 

Jyn falls against the door with a soft thud, and Cassian steps forward, gathering her up in his arms and kissing her until he has to come up for air. Her keys jangle in his hand, and the only other sound around them is the distant whoosh of cars driving down the nearby high street.

 

“You don’t have to treat me like some English rose,” she says, her eyes shining. He thinks, _if Jyn Erso is a rose, then I want her with thorns and all,_ and he pulls her roughly against him and searches the column of her neck for the taste of salt.

 

When he’s nearly lost himself completely in her, though, he hears the sound of the door locks behind her clicking open, and they spring apart like guilty teens, flush and pink and mouths swollen from kisses. Jyn pulls a piece of hair behind her hair and tries to look as put together as possible when her babysitter opens the door, but the sitter’s a bright girl and gives them both a knowing, open-mouthed look of surprise, even as she jumps back at first, startled at seeing them there.

 

“I heard a noise and thought it was you, Jyn!”

 

Jyn straights her blouse, trying to look unflappable. She doesn’t quite succeed.  “Well, you were right, Imogen. It was me.”

 

“With company!”

 

Jyn flushes. “Yes.”

 

“We met earlier tonight, actually, but I didn’t get a name.” Imogen leans across Jyn and proffers a hand. “Liam introduced us, if you remember.”

 

“Yes, of course,” he says. I’m Cassian.”

 

“Cassian? _Cassian_ _Andor?_ Jyn loves your novel! I love it too--I read it when I was watching Liam…”

 

“Why don’t we head upstairs, Imogen?” Jyn asks, “before all the night air creeps into the flat?”

 

“Oh,” Imogen squeaks, jumping back. “Yes, of course.”

 

With the sitter there, though, Cassian stands outside the door, unsure whether or not to come up, but then Jyn turns, the hallway light catching the faint reddishness in her hair, and she beckons to him. Her hand trails behind her, and he walks up and takes it, feels her fingers wrap around his like they belong there.

 

The walls leading up to her flat are spare, but at the top of the steps the room opens up and reveals to him details about a life that he could have only guessed at before. An overstuffed couch covered in a gray slipcover sits covered in books and throw pillows piled into a tower. Bowls of half-eaten cereal sit on the coffee table, and a green vase overstuffed with carnations and baby’s breath sits half tipped, leaning up against a stuffed elephant. And then there are shoes--Jyn’s shoes and Liam’s shoes, lined up neatly against a bookcase; a bowl of clementines and lemons and limes on the white kitchen table; a gleaming blue tea kettle on the cast iron grates on the stove. A very few photos line the shelves, pushed up against the spine of books--snapshots of Liam, landscape photos of the Thames, and faded Polaroids of people he thinks must be her parents.

 

Cassian takes a seat on the sofa while Jyn talks to Imogen in the kitchen. He can hear the water running into the kettle and the click of the pilot light and the whoosh of the flame as Jyn makes good on her promise for tea. She and Imogen hum with discussion but keep their voices low--there is still a toddler sleeping a room or two over in the flat.

 

Looking around, observing as he does, he sees his novel pressed down into the arm of the couch. Of course he’s struck with curiosity and picks it up. Leafing through, he sees that there are notes in the margins and dog-eared pages. He wonders if Jyn added these recently or if they were from some time ago, and then he finds that he doesn’t care. He’s not here in her apartment to find out who reads his books or admires his work. He’s here because of Jyn, because he wants to learn more about her, to coax a smile to her face, to find out what makes her happy and what makes her sad.

 

A few minutes pass and Jyn emerges with Imogen, pocketbook open and bills unfolding in her hands and counted out in order to pay the girl. Cassian lifts his hand and waves goodnight in a silent greeting, and Jyn leads her sitter down the stairs.

 

“He’s cute,” he hears Imogen say to Jyn, followed by what he imagines is Jyn making a noise in her throat in acute embarrassment and hopefully, agreement. The door clicks shut and the kettle begins to whistle. Thinking of the sleep child, Cassian pads over to the kitchen and turns off the stove. He finds two clean mugs and the tea and pours the hot water into each, watching the water turn brown as the bags steep. The fragrant scent of tea fills the air, and he feels decidedly English for a moment.

 

He hears Jyn stop at the archway to the kitchen, watching him as he works, and Cassian takes his time, smiling to himself. He finds two saucers and puts a cup on each, navigating around her kitchen like he’s been there before. He wipes down the counter, washes his hands in the sink and dries them on a clean towel, and then lifts the tea, carrying over one for her and one for him.

 

“Thank you,” she says, taking the cup from him, and then he watches in surprise as Jyn steps around him and places her cup on the table. She gives him a closed-mouth smile when she turns around, looking at him with her steady, green-eyed gaze. Then she holds out her hands again. He hands her his cup and she does the same thing as before--she walks around him and places the steaming mug on the table with only the slightest tinkle of porcelain against porcelain against wood. And then she returns to him once more, hands curling around his neck, her fingers playing with his hair.

 

“You invited me up for tea,” he says, hearing the growl in his own voice.

 

“I did,” she says, her tongue darting out to wet her lips.  “But I didn’t say we had to drink it.”

 

His face hurts from smiling, but he does it again and is given the gift of Jyn burying her face in his chest, of her hands finding the expanse of his lower back and her hands warming him through the cotton of his shirt. Lifting her off her feet, he carries her to the couch, depositing her against the armrest, pressing his own knees into the cushions before her. The furniture groans under their weight, and they stare at each other, nervous at the newness of it all.

 

“What now?’ he asks, and Jyn responses by lifting her hands to his chest, her fingers working slowly to undo the buttons of his shirt.

 

“This?” she says, her skin smooth and warm against his.

 

“That’s a good start,” he rasps, his mouth finding hers once more, his hands caressing the curve of her jaw and the round of her cheek. They move against each other, finding all the places they click together just right, puzzle pieces making a whole. And then, starting quiet and low, the crying starts, a simple whine building and building into a full scream of “Mummy!”

 

Jyn lets loose a string of curses and shakes her head as though remembering herself, and Cassian pulls away, rubbing his face dazedly.

 

Jyn rises from the sofa, her breathing evening out. “I’ll be right back,” she says. She drops a kiss on his forehead, both of them blinking in surprise at the tenderness.

 

His fingers chase hers as she walks toward Liam’s room. “I’ll be here.”

 

Ten minutes pass, then thirty, and Liam’s crying and chatter finally die down. Coming from the boy’s room Cassian can hear the white noise machine playing the sound of ocean waves and see the glow of a blue nightlight shining on the walls. He makes his way over, careful to be quiet as possible, and gently pushes the door open. He see Jyn lying sprawled on the twin bed, Liam flopped over on top of her stomach, face up, the steady rise and fall of his chest visible to Cassian from the doorway.

 

“Hey,” he whispers.

 

“Hey,” she says back, gesturing helplessly at the child trapping her to the bed. “He finally fell back to sleep, but like this. I’m sorry.” She strokes Liam’s arm and the little boy sighs in his sleep.

 

“Nothing to be sorry about,” Cassian assures her. 

 

“Not how I had imagined the night,” she whispers, giving him a rueful smile in the dark. "Well, initially, but then later, I had other ideas."

 

Cassian tip-toes into the room and kneels at the bedside, taking her free hand in his. He presses his lips to her knuckles, grazing her hand with a kiss. “It was a pretty great night for me.”

 

She chuckles, then says in a hush, “So now you’re all silver tongued?”

 

He bends his head; hides his smile. “I”m just being honest.”

 

“The hurdles of dating a single mum,” she mutters, and it makes him grasp her hand tighter.

 

“So we’re dating?” he says, not bothering to hide his delight.

 

Jyn begins to stammer, but Cassian closes his other hand over hers. “Would you do me the honor, Jyn? Of going on a date with me? Dinner? Dancing? Wine? Music? All of the above?"

 

“Well,” she says, “since you asked…”

 

“Good then,” he says.

 

“Good,” she replies. “It’s a date.” 

 

Liam continues to snore, burrowing somehow even further into his mother's arms. Jyn still pinned, Cassian looks at the digital clock on the wall turns over to midnight and releases her hand. He hadn't realized how late it had become. “Looks like you’re tucked in for the night,” he tells her at last, conceding that all the hopes he had for the evening have taken a U-turn. Considering her and her son, he tells Jyn, “I guess I should let myself out?”

 

But her quick and snappy reply doesn’t come right away as he expects. Her eyes seem to swim with a blue melancholy, or maybe, he thinks, it’s just the light, but it makes him add, “Or I could stay if you’d like. If it’s okay.” His eyes dart to Liam. “If it’s appropriate.”

 

Jyn takes a deep breath, then says, “Would you mind?”

 

“Not at all.”

 

She reaches out for him then, and he leans against the bed, head on the sheets, her fingers twined with his. The floor is not the most comfortable place even with the shaggy rug beneath him, but the calm of the night, the warmth of her hand, and the soft snore of a child fills him with such a comfortable peace that Cassian soon drops off into sleep, wrapped up in a happiness that he didn’t know was possible until he found it here in a flat above a bookshop in the middle of London.

 

+

 

Their date is scheduled for the following weekend but it doesn’t mean Cassian doesn’t stop by the bookshop before and after classes, reaching for Jyn’s hands and waist when she searches the shelves in the back room for a book that he “needs most urgently” for his class.

 

“Uh, you guys aren’t fooling anyway,” Bodhi says from the front room, but Jyn just smirks and has him ring up a book for Cassian while she uses the shop window as a mirror and reapplies her lipstick.

 

There are outings with Liam, too, who, thankfully, had been very excited to wake up the morning after the reading to find that his “friend” had slept over and proceeded to show Cassian all of his books and toys. That morning, the day after his reading, when he was able to excuse himself from toddler play time so that Jyn could get Liam dressed and ready for the day, Cassian had helped with breakfast in her flat, making toast triangles for the little boy with butter and jam and bacon sandwiches for himself and Jyn. He’d put on a fresh kettle for tea and had stayed until she had to open up the shop at ten and he had a class at 10:30, which he sprinted to make, still dressed in his clothes from the night before. The rush had been worth it, as well as the sideways looks at his disheveled state. He hadn’t wanted to waste a moment with Jyn, still a little afraid it was a dream that he’d wake from.

 

And the days with Liam and Jyn are happy days, too, especially for Liam who happily accepts shoulder rides from his new friend through the park and giant banana splits that the three of them share when Cassian vetoes the suggestion for banoffee pie. 

 

On days when he’s too busy or she’s too busy, they leave each other carefully folded notes pressed into each other’s hands that she reads behind the counters when the store is empty and that he reads (and rereads) between classes. This happens a few times more than they hoped before their official first date because Jyn has to postpone their dinner out when Imogen has to cancel at the last minute and Bodhi’s already on a date himself and unavailable. “Will you call and cancel our reservations?” Jyn says, calling him with disappointment. In the background he can hear Liam yelling, “I’m hungry!”

 

Cassian presses the phone against his ear and listens to her do her best impression of a stiff upper lip as he paces his flat. “Are you hungry, too?” he asks when Jyn gets back on the phone after fixing Liam a cheese sandwich.

 

“A little,” she admits. “But I guess dinner for one tonight is leftover toddler food and a bag of crisps.”

 

“How about some Mexican food?” Cassian suggests. “I deliver.”

 

“Tell me more,” she says, and he can almost see her eyebrow rise. “I’m intrigued.”

 

He’s already raiding his fridge and packing up tortillas and serrano peppers. “How do you feel about homemade chilaquiles?”

 

 

+

 

“My father’s back in town,” Jyn tells Cassian on a Tuesday. He squeezes he hand and waits for her to continue. Her face looks a little strained, the lines around her eyes tight. “Just for a short visit he says. He has business to take care of back at our house--his house in Tufnell Park. Then it’s back to Switzerland.”

 

“You okay?”

 

They’re back in the Sainsbury’s where it almost all started, Liam holding a box of Wheetabix while straining in his seat and trying to grab a package of chocolate-dipped digestive biscuits while they are stopped in the aisle and not looking. He giggles loudly to himself and swipes a sleeve of cookies.

 

Jyn hasn’t talked much about her brilliant father, but the silence has been enough to tell Cassian what he needs to know until she’s ready to share more.

 

“I know that he does love me, but saying it doesn’t mean the same thing as being around, especially with Liam. He’s barely seen him since he a born! It’s always work first. But it’s always been work first for my father.” She sighs heavily and runs a hand down Liam’s soft cheek. “I don’t understand how he could miss out on this. They’re only babies for a short time. Then they turn on you.” She gives a little laugh, and Cassian reaches down and presses his forehead to hers.

 

“He doesn't know what he's missing,” Cassian says. Jyn catches his hand with hers. He looks into her eyes and wants put all of her sadness away in storage the way he did with his novella. But maybe she’s already done that, he realizes, and both of them have come out of it with the same unsatisfactory result. “It’s always important to actually be there in the end. Work is work, but love? Family? It's everything. It's why we do the things we do.”

 

“He says he wants to try," Jyn says. "He offered to babysit Liam this weekend. A long Papa and Baby sleepover.”

 

“Has he spent much time with children since you were a child?” Cassian asks, a little alarmed. “We wouldn’t want anyone getting hurt.”

 

“Who’d be the one getting hurt?” Jyn gives a small gin, and the weight of their conversation lifts. “Liam or my father?”

 

“Both I suppose.”

 

“But you know what this means, though, don’t you Cassian?”

 

“Grown-up date night is a go?”

 

“That’s right.” Jyn begins to push the cart again toward the bread aisle. “Who knows, too. If you get lucky, maybe you can sleepover, too.”

 

He puts a hand on the small of her back and sees her bring the shopping card to a stop. She blinks and her lips part, and he can see her shiver from his touch. “I’d like that,” he tells her.

 

+

 

Date night comes and they have to cancel their reservations again, but it’s not because Galen Erso’s plans to watch his grandson fall through.

 

When Cassian arrives at Jyn’s front door to pick her up for dinner in Bayswater for some Turkish cuisine, Liam has been safely ensonced in his grandfather’s care for hours. Their dinner reservations get cancelled because when Cassian steps through the threshold of her flat, it takes less than one minute for Jyn to start pulling at his clothes and him at hers, stripping off piece after piece until the stairway is littered in trousers and belts and her stockings.

 

He makes her come twice before they even get as far as her bedroom, and she slams him into a wall with enough force to shake the books off the shelf before she rakes her fingernails down his thighs and looks up at him with only slyness and desire in her big eyes.

 

“I haven’t done this in a while,” she says, breathless.

 

He jerks at her touch, the sensations making his legs into jelly. He can barely manage his answer, his voice ragged and breathy. “No complaints here.”

 

She lets him carry her to the bed when she starts to complain about a LEGO stuck in her back, her laughter bright and happy as she wraps her legs around his waist and lets him stagger toward her room. On the bed she sprawls out, carelessly knocking off a pile of folded laundry that’s sitting on top of her duvet before turning back and watching him hover above her. “I’m very sexy,” she jokes.

 

But it’s not a joke to him. “You are,” says. He drops to the bed next to her and leans in, finding her mouth with his as she sinks into her pillows. She punctuates each of his kisses with a breathy gasp, her arms wrapping automatically around his neck.

 

Cassian doesn’t know how long they are like this except that it’s well past dinner when they finally come up for air. Tangled in bed and in her sheets and with him, Jyn idly runs her hand over his chest, her fingers playing with the hair there. He captures her hand when it begins to tickle and brings it to his lips. She curls up against him, gentle as a housecat, almost shy. He laughs because not so long ago she had had him pinned between her legs, her hands guiding his to touch the swell of her breasts before helping him guide them lower and yet lower still. 

 

“I like all these sides of you,” he says. Then his stomach clenches in hunger.

 

She touches her own naked belly and it growls at her. “Clearly, I’m starving, too,” she says. "Shall we get some food?"

 

He rolls over and brushes the hair out of her face. “Well, I have a suggestion. I know this great kebab shop…”

 

+

 

Cassian gets to meet the elusive genius, Galen Erso. He’s not at all what he’d expected.

 

Jyn shows up with her father and son at one of Cassian’s Saturday football matches at the park. It happens to be the big game against Imperial College, and it’s not the ideal setting to be meeting her father for the first time, but it is what it is. It does help that when he finally shakes Jyn’s father’s hand at the half, Galen Erso is dressed in a baby pink hoodie, sunglasses on his face, a week’s worth of a beard on his chin. He's a lot less intimidating this way.

 

Galen doesn’t get up at first--Liam’s in his lap--so they shake hands, one of them standing, the other sitting. Then Liam jumps out of his grandfather’s laps and demands that Cassian play “ring around the rosy” with him. Cassian excuses himself for a moment and spins around with the little boy who shouts “all fall down!” with gusto before dropping to the grass.

 

Kay walks over and peers at them. “The common misperception is that this song is coded for the Black Plague--”

 

“Kay, please.”

 

“But folklorists have rejected that notion. Still, Cassian,” Kay says, peering at them both with a look of scientific inquiry and skepticism. “Really? You're a grown man.”

 

“He’s a child, Kay. We're playing.”

 

Then Kay stiffens and seems to notice the man in the pink hoodie. He ushers Cassian away abruptly. “Galen Erso? That’s Galen Erso, isn’t it?”

 

Cassian throws off Kay’s spidery, gloved hand. “Yes, Kay,” he says, peeved.

 

“What is he doing here?”

 

“Spending time with his family?”

 

“You’re dating that socialist, Jyn Erso, aren’t you?” Kay says.

 

“Yes, Kay. She is my girlfriend now,” he says, but thinks  _And I’m going to marry her one day, if she’ll have me._

 

“You know he’s a genius, don’t you?”

 

“Did you want an introduction, Kay? If that’s what you’re angling at, just ask.”

 

Kay makes a face but nods affirmative.

 

The second half of the game is rougher on Yavin, and Imperial takes a commanding 2-0 lead with thirty minutes left, almost scoring on another shot by Tarkin that narrowly misses the net, bouncing off the crossbar. That’s when Cassian sees Jyn walk over to her father, whispering something into his ear. She motions to Cassian from the sideline to come over, and he jogs over, watching at Imperial sets up for the corner kick.

 

It's a productive and important trip to the sidelines, because it turns out, Galen Erso is not only an engineering genius, he’s got a mind for football.

 

“There’s a flaw in their game plan,” Jyn says, and Galen Erso nods slightly and expands on his idea.

 

“It's small, but once you can exploit the weakness, their whole defensive system will go down. In their panic, they'll try to send their forwards and midfielders up, leaving the defense undermanned. You have a offensive advantage already. Once that happens, you can blow right through their defenders and score easily. If your keeper can defend your side, you can get three more. Exploit their weakness. Exploit Krennic, specifically.”

 

And it’s precisely what they do. Luke Skywalker nails the game winning shot in extra time, and they watch as Anakin Skywalker falls to the ground, the ball sailing past his open hand a minute before the final whistle blows.

 

They celebrate at the pub, Cassian cornering Jyn in the hallway to kiss her senseless, his hands running up the back of her neck and into her hair.

 

“It feels inappropriate to do it in front of your father,” he says in her ear. "Or to kiss him in thanks for the coaching." She knocks him on the chest but presses another kiss against his mouth. And then she hesitates, as though there’s something she wants to say but can’t quite get out.

  
“What is it?”

 

She looks up at him and seems suddenly settled. Digging into her purse, she pulls out a stack of papers. Not one of their love notes to one another but a newly printed manuscript, stapled on the corner.

 

“You wrote something!” he says, taking it into his hand, marveling at the words before him.

 

“I wrote something,” she echoes. “Will you read it?”

 

“Will I?” he kisses the papers, then her. “I can’t wait.”

 

+

 

Liam is curled up in Jyn’s lap and they are on her sofa, the TV on mute, a children’s show with talking dogs bouncing on the screen.

 

“I loved it,” he says about her short story. “And it’s not just because I’m sleeping with you.”

 

“Is that right?” She laughs, and when she does, when she is truly happy he has discovered, she laughs as though with her whole body, shoulders shaking, feet tapping.

 

“What made you start writing again?” he asks.

 

Jyn reaches up and runs her hand against the stubble on his cheeks with the back of her fingers. “I found something--someone--that made me passionate about writing again. Also,” she says, rubbing Liam’s back, “with my father around now and helping out, I suddenly actually have time alone just for me to write. How about you, Cassian?”

 

He wraps his arm around her tighter, and her head falls onto his shoulder. “What about me?”

 

“Have you started writing again?”

 

He nods slowly.

 

“You have!” She pulls away, surprise on her face, and then hits his shoulder. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

 

“I wanted to see if it was really happening,” he says. “But it looks like it is.”

 

“And what’s your excuse?” she says, her voice quieting when Liam whimpers in his sleep. She feigns a shocked face. “Am I your muse?”

 

He takes her all in, hair tied back in a messy bun, eyeliner smudged all around her eyes. “You give me faith in myself again, Jyn. And with that, I feel like I can write again.”

 

“Oh stop!” she says, but she’s reddening.

 

“And you’re my . . . partner, you know? Writing can be such a lonely process. Your thoughts are to yourself; your writing only seen by your eyes. Your internal feedback loop is one minute excitement and the next minute self-hate. But I have you now, and we can talk about it because you understand. We can bounce ideas off one another. It means a lot to me to have you--for many reasons of course--but for this reason, too.” He lets out a breath. ”And I haven’t had that in a long time. I've never had someone in my life like you.”

 

“I don’t know what to say, Cassian, except--wow.” Then she turns, presses her face to the curve in his neck. She looks up at him, her eyes full of stars, and swallows hard.

 

“There is something else that I want to show you some time,” he says after a long moment of quiet. “A story I wrote many years ago.”

 

“A missing a novel?”

 

He twines his fingers with hers, lets the shiver of pleasure run up his arm. “Yes. The novel I wrote before _La Frontera_.”

 

“Where is it now? Can I read it?”

 

“Not quite. It’s in a storage unit. In Tucson.”

 

“And you’d like me to see it?” she asks, and a shadow crosses her face.

 

“What’s wrong?” They’ve known one another now three months, and he already knows her expressions in the way she’s known his from the start. And because Jyn is Jyn, she doesn’t beat around the bush.

 

“When exactly would I see it, though?” she asks, “if it’s back in the states?”

 

Then it hits him. She’s asking about an expiration date. An expiration date on _them_. They’d been in such a rush of love in these early stages that they hadn’t at all broached the topic of what it meant that his contract at Yavin would be over in a year--now just nine months away. _He_ hadn’t thought about it until now, but only because it hasn’t occurred to him that he’d ever leave her.

 

And then he realizes, it’s maybe as simple as that; simple as just letting her know. “I’m not going anywhere, Jyn.” He draws her closer, arm wrapping around her torso, his hand curling just beneath her neck. He buries his face against her shoulder as though he needs her to hold him up. She moves in unison with him, her arms looping around his neck, their breathing matching up, steady and deep as a heartbeat. “I’m here, Jyn. I’m here with you. I'm not going anywhere.”

 

She laughs in relief, and they release one another. “I’m glad you came,” she says. “To London. To my bookshop.”

 

“It was the best decision of my life,” he says, and he means every word.

 

“You know,” Jyn says, pulling a quilt over Liam’s little shoulders, “I was born and raised in London. I left for a few years, when I was with Saw--when I met Liam’s father--but it was always home base. But somehow, after my mum died, it never really felt like home. Liam's father disappeared from our lives. My father left to do his work on the continent, and I was here in school, then alone and pregnant.” She trails off, brushes Liam’s hair and leans down to kiss his head like it’s a compulsion. “But I realized something recently.” She looks up at Cassian and squeezes his hand.

 

“What’s that?” he says, his mouth suddenly dry.

 

“That home isn’t just a place or a location,” she says. “It’s a person. It’s someone who makes you feel safe. Someone who sticks around. Someone who makes you feel like you belong.”

 

And she gives him a look, unguarded and wide-eyed, and he understands her; understands her the way she understands him: they are two open books laid out bare before one another.

 

“Well," he says, and he thinks she will understand him when he says this, "Welcome home." And as he kisses her, he knows that the feeling is true for him too.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> spacepandar made this INCREDIBLE sketch of Cassian and Jyn's first meeting at the book store. Take a look at it [here](http://spacepandar.tumblr.com/post/159331543070/i-knew-i-was-going-to-sketch-the-bookshop-au-by)! And then she made this awesome sketch of the [bar scene in chapter 2](http://operaticspacetrash.tumblr.com/post/159558592231/spacepandar-rebelcaptain-week-day-4-au-of-your)!
> 
>  
> 
> You can find me on tumblr at @operaticspacetrash.


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